


Faint Indirections

by ignatiustrout



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Americans, Anxious Harry Potter, Baby Gay Draco Malfoy, Bisexual Harry Potter, College Student Draco Malfoy, Family Dinners, Friendship, H/D Fan Fair 2019, Halloween parties, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Harry Potter Has a Pet Snake, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Librarian Harry Potter, M/M, Misunderstandings, Parselmouth Harry Potter, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Romance, Secondary Theme: Book Fair, University, Wizarding World of the United States of America
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2020-11-27 09:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20946260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignatiustrout/pseuds/ignatiustrout
Summary: Draco Malfoy is the last person Harry expects to turn up in Boston, Massachussetts. But now he's here, and he won't stop requesting books from the library where Harry works.





	Faint Indirections

**Author's Note:**

> For Prompt #[39](https://docs.google.com/document/d/16er_sVwwFtbVQxtiFqHRWhw09kwNYhywsB-R48qtVPU/edit#).
> 
> I really ran with this prompt and made it my own, so I hope you like where I went with it, prompter! All of the book titles I used, except a few magical ones, are real, and most of them were published before 2005, though sometimes I couldn’t resist a more recent one. The title comes from the Walt Whitman poem Among the Multitude. The setting comes from Boston as I knew it, which is not the same time the fic takes place; I hope any older Boston residents forgive me for inevitable inaccuracies. I also really don’t care for JKR’s extratextual American lore, so I’ve scrapped it for my own. To each their own, but I hope you’ll like my own take on the wizarding world of America. Thanks X, for beta reading and also everything. 
> 
> Warnings for internalized homophobia and homophobic parents.

At twenty-five, Harry Potter’s life is more routine than he ever imagined it could be.

He’s still not sure how he feels about it.

He’s lived in Boston, Massachusetts for three years now. Hermione’s here, too, and Ron’s here half the time. Harry spends about twenty hours a week in the Tituba Library, one of the many Alse Young University properties hidden among Harvard’s surplus of old brick buildings. He splits this time between the desk in the Dark Arts Department and whatever other tasks they have for a clerk. He tells aspiring Curse Breakers, Aurors, and Healers where to find books, puts titles aside for students who have requested them, and puts returned books back in the right places on the shelves. He chats with his fellow Dark Arts Department clerk, Cameron, a tattooed grad student a couple years his senior. She comes from the south and went to Laveau, the wizarding school in Louisiana, so she has a lot of opinions about people making food the wrong way up north. She’s way cooler than he’ll ever be, even now that he’s got Sirius’ bike, but she’s good company.

On Thursday mornings, he goes to therapy. Sometimes the rest of the day’s fucked after that, but not as often as it used to be. More often than not, he ends up wandering around the Public Garden afterward, rain or shine, trying to feel like he’s a part of the world. He likes the city, but all the green, quiet but alive like the grounds of Hogwarts, is what makes him feel like part of the world. 

He goes to Hermione and Ron’s flat in Brookline. He goes to the grocery store down the street from his own flat in Allston, and the library a bit further on to pick up mystery novels he won’t get at work, and various restaurants from which he takes food home at night. He reads his novels and solves the mysteries before the characters do, except when he doesn’t, and those he tells his friends to read. He chats to his sweet ball python, Gwendolyn, and he goes for runs in a nearby park along the river.

And that’s it, really.

Some days, he feels so grateful. And some days he feels like his skin is itching all over, like surely it’s wrong to be in one place, not even leaving for the summers, for this long, with nothing bad happening at all. 

He supposes some people would consider many of the things that have happened to him in Boston “bad.” His first boyfriend, if you could call him that, broke his heart. Ron and Hermione broke up for a few hellish months, and Harry heard from Ron maybe a handful of times during the whole thing. He got hit by a car crossing the street the day before his twenty-fourth birthday. 

But those are normal things. Those are “being alive” things. Things so normal Harry thought, his seventh year, he might never get to think about anything like them again.

He thinks he is probably happy. Most of the time.

***

The second week of September, Harry is charged with putting together five holds for one student. The books requested are _A Complete Compendium of First Born Curses_, _Cursed Blood: A Case Study of the Romanovs_, _The Kennedy Curse: The Search for Magic in an American Tragedy_, _When Salem Met Harvard: The Separation of Magic and Muggle in the U.S._, and _The American Wizard’s Guide to Living Like a Muggle: Everything You Need To Know About Daily Life Without Magic in the U.S.A._

It isn’t until he’s bundling the books to put on the holds shelf that he lets the name of the requester sink in. D. Malfoy, Student ID Number 100370. 

D. Malfoy. 

He clutches the pile of books so tightly one of them falls to the floor. It’s the one about living like a muggle in the U.S.A., which is…interesting. 

Harry thinks he might have had a panic attack a couple years ago, but he manages to calm himself down by noting the world around him—his feet on the ground. His hands on the books. His breath going in and out of his body. The quiet sounds of the main floor of the library floating by, then entering, his ears.

“All good?” a voice says quietly, and Harry tenses then relaxes when Cameron places a hand on his back.

He didn’t expect her—she’s supposed to be coming to take his place in an hour or so. But now that he’s focusing on more than just his body’s attachment to the world around him, he can see her friends gathered around a nearby table with notepads and quills and muggle pens, a group of fellow grad students and writers who sometimes invite him for drinks. They’re all glancing in his direction with mild concern and pretending they’re not. 

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Sorry.” He bends to pick up the book he dropped, and when he’s back upright he sees Cam raising an eyebrow at him, very much not amused. “Er—not sorry,” says Harry. 

“I thought so,” she says, and then she smiles. Harry had a crush on her for a split second, when they first started working together—she’s just so effortlessly cool—but he knows now she’s meant to be his friend. “Do you need anything? Need to leave early?” 

“No,” he says. “I’m good. I was just—surprised.” 

“Surprised by what?” she asks, and then quickly she adds, “You don’t need to tell me. Sorry. I’m nosy.” 

Harry looks around for eavesdroppers out of habit, then realizes it’s 2005 and he’s a library clerk and Malfoy—Malfoy’s who knows what, a student, apparently. A student getting books about curse breaking and…muggles. “I think I know the person who requested these,” he says. “I didn’t, uh…expect he’d be here. Ever.” 

“Huh,” says Cam. “Bad? Good? Both?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says honestly. “Probably not good. But I’ve got some more holds to get together, so I’ll…do that.” 

“Okay,” says Cam. She smiles, and it’s sweeter than he thinks people realize she’s capable of, with all her tattoos and her septum piercing and her inability to suffer fools. “I hope there’s no more blasts from the past.” 

“Hope so,” says Harry. “I’ll see you later.”

“Later,” says Cam, and she heads back to her friends, who have all gone back to scribbling on notepads or reading heavy books, undoubtedly about Literature with a capital “L,” things he doesn’t really understand or care to. He’s happy with his mystery novels. 

Harry’s shift finishes relatively uneventfully—he only gets yelled at by a stressed out freshman once—and the moment he’s out into the warm fall sunshine of Harvard Square, he hops on Sirius’ bike and rides to Brookline. 

Hermione’ll kill him if she sees he didn’t bring a helmet, but he doubts Sirius ever once wore a helmet. He knows what she’d say to that, too—Sirius Black was not exactly a model for best practice, when it comes to safety. But Harry’s never been that, either.

Boston’s a relatively small city—well, technically Cambridge and Brookline are not part of Boston, but they may as well be—Brookline is, after all, surrounded on all sides by Boston neighborhoods. But all these little cities don’t take a long time to get around, when the traffic is light, and Harry’s lucky to have gotten out of the library in the early afternoon today, during the few blessed hours before the muggles pack onto roads not made for modernity and try to squeeze their way home. 

Hermione and Ron’s place is off a street by one of Brookline’s many synagogues, and Harry passes kosher delis and bookshops packed with thick volumes and prayer shawls and all types of candlesticks on his way there. He revs the bike for a group of schoolchildren shouting and pointing at him, leaving annoyed teachers in bright safety vests behind, and ends up riding alongside a green line train—it rumbles along beyond him when he turns off Beacon Street. 

He doesn’t even know if Hermione’s home. Ron’s not. This is an England week. Ron splits his time between Ottery St. Catchpole, London, and Boston, helping George and Lee with Wheezes in all kinds of ways, but mostly with marketing and sales strategies. They’re looking into a Boston location.

At first, Ron came with Hermione when she started at the university, intending to live here full time while she finished her studies. But he missed his family horribly. He hated America. It was more of a culture shock than he expected—it didn’t help that magic and muggle life is much more integrated here. That, and Fred’s loss still lingered; the Weasleys did not like to be apart. 

Harry, meanwhile, came because he had nowhere else to go and no one else to be—he’d left the aurors in a terrible depression, and the only thing he knew still wanted was Ron and Hermione. He, of course, ended up rather liking it here. 

All this led to one of their biggest ever fights, the three of them, with all sorts getting dragged up about Ron abandoning them—he claimed he was either to be forced into misery or made into the bad guy when he left them again—and codependency and whether or not Harry was their _child_ and whether or not Ron was a misogynist for not letting Hermione properly follow her dreams and whether or not Hermione was selfish and ruthless, and it was awful, worse than when Ron left them in the forest when they were seventeen. They all said awful things. 

It’s much better now. Ron likes traveling, and he likes doing what he does for Wheezes, and he likes being a bit of a homemaker for Hermione, doing most of the cooking and cleaning while she spends long hours at the university getting her law degree. Harry doesn’t feel like their child. Not usually. 

At Hermione’s building, Harry presses the buzzer reading “3—Granger.” 

There’s no answer. 

He presses the buzzer again, for longer, though he knows it’s likely no one’s home. But sometimes Hermione gets so absorbed in studying she doesn’t hear anything, even Crookshanks yelling for dinner, and it’s her last year at Alse Young, so undoubtedly her workload will be getting ridiculous. 

“Hermione’s up at the grocery store, honey.” 

Harry turns to see the woman from Apartment 2 behind him, smiling kindly with her groceries in her hands. She is older and lives alone, but every Friday night and during the Jewish holidays, a whole parade of adults and children show up to visit. He thinks she might have a hundred grandchildren. It reminds him of the Weasleys, and it makes him smile. “I just ran into her,” she continues, taking a moment to put down one heavy bag.

“Oh, let me help you, Joyce,” says Harry. 

“I’d say you don’t have to, but I’d be lying,” Joyce says, and then she laughs heartily while Harry picks up her heavy bags. “Hermione should be back soon, she was heading to the check out when I was leaving,” she continues as she unlocks the front door. “Told me the boy’s back Friday. I said come over for Shabbos, you know Naomi loves the company, she needs a smart chickie like that to look up to, but she said you all were having a little get together.”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “Did she tell you why?” 

“No she did not, should she have?”

“It’s her birthday Monday,” says Harry. 

“It is not!” says Joyce, and Harry relishes her mixed outrage and joy. “Oh, I’m making that girl something whether she likes it or not. Do I even want to know how old she’ll be?” 

“Twenty six,” says Harry, and Joyce tuts loudly. 

“That’s when you’re still supposed to make a fuss,” says Joyce. “Well anyway, regardless, you’re all invited for Shabbos next time, any time. The holidays don’t start ’til October this year, I hate late years, but then everybody will be around.” Harry can’t imagine that he hasn’t already seen “everybody” in Joyce’s family, considering the size of the usual group. “I want you to meet my grandson. He’s younger than you, but just a few years, and he just—you know.” She waves her hand in Harry’s direction, then says in a very loud whisper, “_Came out of the closet_.” 

“Ah,” says Harry. Older women _love_, he has learned, to set him up. 

“He’s cute,” she says, winking, “If you can believe a grandmother’s opinion. I’ll see you soon, Harry, maybe you wanna go downstairs and help Hermione with those groceries, too, don’t make a girl schlep up here by herself.” 

“Good idea,” says Harry, because Joyce does not and will not ever know Hermione’s probably lightened the bags with magic. 

Hermione’s at the front door when Harry gets to the bottom of the stairs. He opens the door for her, and she raises her eyebrows. “This feels backwards,” she says. She’s wearing a Weasley sweater, bright orange and probably Ron’s, and it makes Harry feel a pang of some bittersweet emotion he doesn’t feel like examining further right now. 

“I helped Joyce with her groceries,” he says. “I’ve been told to help you, too.” 

Unceremoniously, Hermione plops several (magically light) paper bags into his arms. “Well, what Joyce says,” she says. “Make yourself look real strong for her.” 

“Excuse you,” says Harry as Hermione locks the building’s front door behind her. “I’m very strong.” 

“Mhm, and manly,” says Hermione. 

“I didn’t mean _that_.”

“Yes, of course,” says Hermione dismissively, leading the way up to her flat. 

It’s a little, cozy place, white walls and fancy moldings, old windows with large panes. The living room consists largely of bookshelves and Hermione’s desk, with an enormous old sofa crammed in somehow. The kitchen is small but serviceable with a magicked spotless stove and a round, only slightly rickety table with mismatched chairs. 

The groceries get put away with a wave of Hermione’s wand, and with another wave the tea kettle’s on. Harry knows what this means: Hermione knows him, and she knows he wants to talk. 

“Well?” she says, once they’re both sat at the table, Harry in the blue chair he likes, Hermione in the fairly generic wooden chair she bought off the street at Allston Christmas, the time of year every student in Boston moves at once and leaves their things everywhere for free. 

“Do you know what Draco Malfoy’s up to nowadays?” Harry asks.

Hermione blinks. “I’m sorry?” she says. He imagines this is the last thing she thought he was going to say. He doesn’t think anyone’s brought up Malfoy for…well, years, probably. 

“Malfoy,” says Harry. “Do you know what he’s doing?” 

“Have we gone back ten years?” 

Harry scowls. “It’s only—I got a hold today for ‘D. Malfoy.’ Some books about curses and muggles.” 

Hermione’s eyebrows go much further up.

“Not in a bad way,” Harry says hurriedly. “Um, separately. Not like—cursing muggles. Actually, about living like a muggle, and about, um, history of curses, not, like, practical things. Family curses.” 

Now Hermione furrows her brow, bringing her tea up to her lips. “Hmm,” she says.

“So you haven’t heard anything about him?” 

Hermione shrugs. “No,” she says. “But if I’m perfectly honest, I couldn’t give less of a crap about someone if I tried, so I haven’t really looked.”

A bit surprised, though he doesn’t know why he should be, Harry says, “Well—that’s fair.” 

“I know I was sort of interested in the halfway house, from a lens of criminal justice reform,” says Hermione. She taps her fingernails thoughtfully against her mug of tea. “But I’ve no idea how long he was meant to stay there or what he did afterward. Frankly I haven’t though of him in—I don’t know how long.”

Harry wonders if that’s normal. Not thinking of Draco Malfoy for so long you don’t remember how long it’s been. He wonders if he ought to be “normal” like that. 

It’s not like he thinks of him _all the time_ or anything, he just—well, he wonders sometimes. 

He knows Malfoy and some other underage offenders, Death Eater adjacent in some way, were sentenced to live without magic for some period of time he can’t remember, in some kind of halfway house for rehabilitation. He remembers talking a lot with Hermione about it—about how it was good, yes, an interesting model, but strange (said, from Hermione, with heavy sarcasm) how a bunch of mostly white, mostly rich, mostly “pureblood” kids were the ones who got anyone thinking about reform for juvenile offenders.

But that’s as much as Harry knows. Mostly, he just thinks about—what Malfoy might have been like without magic, or if he’s changed at all, or why he didn’t give Harry up at Malfoy Manor, or why his wand worked so well for Harry—that or Harry has nightmares or even just neutral dreams about his past, Malfoy strutting and sneering around them with regularity. He was a big part of Harry’s life, after all. He can’t just—disappear. Can he? 

Clearly not. Because now he’s _here_, of all places, across an ocean and where no one Harry doesn’t want around should be.

“Are you okay?” Hermione asks. “I don’t mean to be…dismissive.” She peers at him in a way only Hermione and Dumbledore have ever been able to do, like even if he was any good at lying, he wouldn’t be able to do it. “I understand it probably feels—strange, to think of seeing him. I’m a little spooked, actually, letting it sink in.” 

Harry isn’t sure he’s okay, but when Hermione says this, he realizes she probably has far more of a right to feel badly about this. He reaches over to squeeze her hand, something he’s become far better at in recent years—touching. At least with people like Ron and Hermione. “It’s fine,” he says. “I’m fine, I mean.” 

“Will you have to see him when he gets his books?” 

Harry shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe. Depends on when he picks them up. I sent out the owl they were ready before I left today, so if I’m lucky he’ll show up tonight or something, get Cam or someone instead.” He wants to say ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if it weren’t him?,’ but he can’t imagine anyone else in the world is called ‘D. Malfoy.’ “If you run into him and he gives you any shit—you let me know.” 

“Hmm,” says Hermione, leaning back in her chair. 

Harry frowns. “Hmm?” he repeats, putting down his tea. 

“I’m perfectly capable of handling it myself,” Hermione says. “I promise you.” 

Harry does not know what to say to this. Obviously Hermione is capable. To Harry, this is a little like saying “the Weasleys have red hair.” “Doesn’t mean there isn’t strength in numbers,” says Harry. “Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”

Hermione sighs. “Yes, yes,” she says. “You’re right. Harry, I just—you’re doing so well.” 

Harry blinks. “Um, thank you?” he says. It feels like the conversation is pinging all over the place. 

“I don’t want anything to get in the way of that.” 

Harry doesn’t want to feel angry. But his back and shoulders tense up immediately. “Draco Malfoy is not capable of doing anything to get in the way of that,” he snaps, and the reality that this reaction could be proving Hermione right in some way makes him angrier, though he thought he’d accepted long ago Hermione would always be right. 

“I hope so,” says Hermione.

“Yeah, thanks a lot for all the faith you have in me.” 

“Oh, don’t you dare act like I don’t have faith in you, Harry Potter,” says Hermione. “It’s not _you_ I don’t have faith in.” 

Harry allows his shoulders to loosen a little, slumps a bit in his chair. “Yeah,” he grumbles, which isn’t a response at all, but Hermione seems to understand; she rolls her eyes but gets up to give him a hug.

“He can’t bother either of us,” she says. “He’s an impotent little worm. He always has been, and now he’s even more so.”

Harry laughs loudly, wrapping his arms around Hermione in return. “Thanks,” he says. “You’re right.” 

“Obviously,” says Hermione, shooting him a playful smile before heading over to wash her mug in the sink. 

That night, in his own little flat, Harry takes Gwen out of her terrarium and chats to her about it. He does feel better after talking to Hermione—he truly always does—but sometimes hearing Gwen’s perspective is nice, too. She knows very little about human machinations, about social pleasantries or dating or jobs, about bigotry or wars, and sometimes this amounts to a wisdom Harry feels he can’t access anymore on his own.

He settles in his plant filled sitting room with Gwen in his lap. He has plants from Neville and plants from the garden store down the road. He likes to keep things alive—in a gentle way. A small way. 

“_There was a strange human I don’t like at the library today_,” he says. “Strange human” is the simplest way he can describe it to her; “enemy,” he thinks, would be too strong, and even in this thought process about how to speak to Gwen, he’s unlocked something: “enemy” _is_ too strong. 

“_Strange humans are dangerous_,” Gwen says helpfully.

“_Yes_,” says Harry, running two fingers gently along her back. She does not like her head to be touched, but she lets him do this. He asked her if she liked it once, and she said, “_I am not scared_,” which wasn’t exactly a five star review, but eventually she told him she liked…well, it isn’t an exact translation, but something like the “energy” of it. So he still pets her. “_Sometimes_,” Harry continues. “_Not always_.” 

“_If not dangerous_,” says Gwen. “_It will feed you._.” She always says “it.” Gender is one of those human things of which Gwen has very little concept. She understands sex, so far as reproduction is necessary, but the differences between human sexes are inconsequential to her and difficult to remember, and anyway, Harry’s learned since Hogwarts people probably ought to be a lot more like Gwen in this regard. 

Harry laughs. “_I don’t think Draco Malfoy is ever going to feed me._

“_Stays strange, then_,” says Gwen. “_I do not trust any human if it does not feed me._” 

“_I know you don’t_,” says Harry fondly. 

“_I will trust a human if it can speak_,” Gwen adds. "_Only one human can speak_” 

“_That’s true_,” says Harry, allowing himself to be, in Gwen’s mind, the only human capable of speaking. “_So I should only trust him if he feeds me_?” He laughs, but Gwen is silent. Sometimes, this means she is thoughtful; other times, it means she is bored of the conversation. 

He’s just thought it’s probably the latter this time when Gwen says, “_Three things are trust. Feeding. Gentle hands. Gentle voice. Also speaking. But you already speak to it in your sounds. So for you, three things._.” 

Harry thinks he should feel like laughing still, at the thought of Draco Malfoy and “gentle hands,” “gentle voice.” But he doesn’t laugh. He feels something sharp in his chest, something he thinks must be ugly, the way it pokes at him, so he pushes it away as hard as he can. 

“_Right_,” he says, petting Gwen slowly. “_Thanks_.”

***

The following day, both Harry and Cam are at the library in the morning.

He wants to ask her if a skinny blond with a very punchable face showed up last night to pick up books, but he doesn’t know quite how to do it. 

A wild thought appears in his head: _If you ask, she’ll think you’re interested in him._

But why would she think that? Sure, she knows he’s bi, because she is as well. But a man can covertly ask after a tall skinny blond for non-gay reasons. There are tons of them, surely. Probably even reasons less weird than “I am 25 and afraid of seeing my pathetic little worm of a schoolyard nemesis.” 

Anyway, Cam’s reading a book under the desk. It would be rude to interrupt. Even if, from the look on her face, she’s not enjoying it. Harry peers at the cover. _A Portrait of a Wizard as a Young Man_ by William Owens, it says. Probably one of her stuffy literature class books.

Harry glances around the floor of the library where they’re stationed. Most students up this early are suffering through classes, so the place is relatively deserted, save for a few impossibly young looking students Cam identifies as “anxious freshmen.” Harry remembers feeling so _grown up_ at 18, 19, whatever, but these people are—they’re _children_, round baby faces, looking so naively eager and—well, looking like Harry never felt, to be honest, but that’s a thought for therapy tomorrow.

There’s a slight creak as the heavy doors to their floor open and someone walks in. Wrapped up in his reverie about youth, or whatever, Harry forgot to be anxious, and now— 

There he is. 

It’s him. 

D. Malfoy, student ID number 100370. Draco Malfoy, wincing a bit at the sound of the door and looking about apologetically. 

Harry looks away before they can make eye contact, swiveling so he’s staring so hard at the desk he feels like he might end up triggering some accidental magic and burning right through it. 

Fuck. 

Cam doesn’t appear to have noticed his anxiety. She glances up from her book for a brief moment, then looks up properly, a smile flitting across her face. “Hey!” she says, probably louder than they are supposed to in the library. One of the anxious freshman, perusing the shelf marked _Wards_, jumps. 

No. 

Surely she isn’t speaking to _Draco Malfoy_.

But she is. She is, because Malfoy _smiles_ in _recognition_ and starts walking their way. 

Somehow he became something rather large in Harry’s head, to such an extent that he seems smaller in person than he should be—still tall and a bit stretched and over-pointy like a children’s cartoon, but human sized, not too different from Ron’s height. He is wearing muggle clothing—faded jeans that make his legs look too skinny, a turtleneck that makes him look stuffy. When he gets close enough, Harry realizes his cardigan and his boots both look like they’ve seen better days, though sometimes Harry can’t tell if students look like that on purpose. The dark circles under his eyes suggest it isn’t on purpose. The pervasive scent of cigarette smoke suggests it is. 

“Draco, right?” says Cam, shutting her book and placing it on the desk in front of her, not bothering to mark her place. 

“Hello, yes, and you’re Cameron?” he says, and hearing his voice is somehow what does it for Harry, like a punch in the gut that’s sent him all the way back to Hogwarts, this stupid fucking posh git sneering at him in the halls. It doesn’t matter that he’s smiling in a way Harry’s not sure he’s ever seen him do, like a normal person. It doesn’t matter that last night he realized “enemy” is too strong a word for what this man is to him. He hears that voice and right away he hears “you’ll be next, mudbloods” and “you’re dead, Potter” and a myriad of family related insults. 

“How are _you_ feeling about Owens?” Cam asks, still oblivious to Harry reeling next to her. 

“Honestly?” Malfoy says, leaning forward on the desk. He leans so casually, and his voice turns low and amused, and Harry is hit with the fear he might be _flirting_ with Cam, or that he might _want_ to. Please, he thinks, don’t let Cam fancy Malfoy. Surely she has better taste. “I can’t be sure he’s ever met a woman in real life,” Malfoy continues. “It’s driving me mad.” 

Cam snorts. “That’s for sure.”

“I can’t imagine how it is for you. I told my mother who we were reading and she said—” He draws himself up and does an uncanny impression of Narcissa, too good for Cam to appreciate, wrinkling his nose and saying with fake-polite disdain, “‘Are you?’” 

Cam laughs. “Oh my god,” she says. “Had you read him at all before?” 

“No, I—” Malfoy starts, and finally, before he can finish, his eyes slide over to the chair next to Cam. 

His shoulders tighten so quickly and obviously it’s a wonder they didn’t make an audible crack. 

“Hello,” Harry says darkly.

“Oh,” says Malfoy. 

For a brief moment, they stare at each other. Cam raises her eyebrows. 

“Yes,” says Harry. He doesn’t really know what this means. Yes, I am here: Harry Potter. Yes, this is happening. 

“Well,” says Malfoy weakly. “Fancy meeting you here.” 

Harry does not know what to say to that.

“Well,” Malfoy says again. He fidgets with the bag slung over his shoulder. He appears to have been waiting for a reaction to go on. Maybe he wanted Harry to laugh. Maybe he wanted him to be polite. “Classic. That’s my life, isn’t it?” 

“My life, more like,” says Harry.

“What does that mean?” Malfoy says, raising an eyebrow. God, Harry forgot he could do that, and that he used to be jealous of it, too. “Does it mean your life is worse than mine, or does it mean I am the only one doing any intruding? Or is it that you’re the star of life, and the rest of us are background characters?” 

Harry, again, doesn’t know what to say. Though he believes some of those things to be true—the first two, anyway—he does not want to admit to meaning them out loud, especially in front of Cam, who, ostensibly, respects him. Though if she fancies Malfoy, that takes her down a bit in Harry’s esteem. 

“Anyway,” says Malfoy. He stops fidgeting and straightens himself up to levels of good posture Harry didn’t believe were possible until this moment. “Cameron, I had not read Owens before, and he is awful, and I will be sure to say so in class, as I’m positive you will as well.” His accent seems like it’s gotten heavier, too, sharper, like suddenly he’s got people to impress. It makes Harry resent him more. “I requested some books, and I wondered where I might find them?” 

“They’ll be on the shelf over there,” says Cam, pointing to the left of the desk. 

“Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow. I look forward to complaining with you at length.” He glances at Harry. “Potter, I’ll—well I suppose I’ll inevitably run into you, because that’s how my life goes.”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” says Harry.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “It’s no trouble at all. I adore you, Potter, just like everybody else.” The effect of this is a bit muddled by the blush that instantly springs up on his pale, pointy face, but Harry’s rattled enough for it to hit anyway as Malfoy turns on his heel and stalks over to the holds. 

Cam is silent until Malfoy walks out the door and back into the stairwell, and then she turns to Harry and says, “_Woof_. What was _that_?” 

“We didn’t get along in school,” says Harry.

“Yikes,” says Cam.

“He wasn’t a good person,” says Harry. “I don’t know what the fuck he’s like now, but he wasn’t good then.” 

“He seems okay in Brit Lit,” says Cam slowly. “I even really liked him…we had a really good talk on the Separate Sphere Theory—um, like, about analyzing muggles and magical art separately.” 

“What does _he_ have to say about _that_?” says Harry.

“Uh oh,” says Cam. “Well…I don’t know how much you know about the theory.”

“If it’s a theory, I probably don’t know shit about it,” Harry says, stretching his fingers on the hand that still faintly reads _I must not tell lies_. 

“The basic premise is there’s no need to talk about the influence of muggle culture on post 17th century magical art, including literature. That our cultures are so different and so separate since the Statute of Secrecy that there isn’t any muggle influence on our work. It’s a British theory, obviously. No offense.” 

“No,” says Harry, “England’s, you know. Racist.”

Cam laughs. “We’re racist as fuck here, too, just in different ways. Anyway, obviously, it’s bullshit, especially if you’ve, like, met a muggle born. Our families have always been way more mixed than upper class 'full magic' critics want to believe, _especially_ in America, but it’s such a big thing in the history of magical art that we always have to talk about it, and since we’re taking Brit Lit and even post-war y’all are still struggling with the concept of sharing, it comes up.” 

“I don’t get that,” says Harry. “I mean, how many artists and writers and whatever were ever actually 100% pureblood? Or, wizard-born…er, 100% magic.” Harry learned quickly that saying “pureblood” in America is a bit like saying “homosexual"—weirdly clinical and likely to offend.

Cam shoots him a small smile and says, “That’s a big flaw people point out. Like I said, our families have always been way more mixed than people wanna believe.”

“So what did Malfoy say about it?” Harry asks.

Cam snorts like she did when Malfoy said that writer had never met a woman. “_Malfoy_, God.” 

“What?”

“Using each other last names, that’s so embarrassing. You sound like 19th century school story protagonists.” 

“What, you don’t use people’s surnames in America?”

“I don’t know, I guess, like, coven bros’ll do it. Like—” She puts on a dopy, deep voice. “Yo, Potter!” She shrugs. “But anyway, it’s stupid. I forgive you, you’re a man.” 

“Oh, thanks,” says Harry. “What did he _say_?” 

“Calm down,” Cam advises. “He said basically what I said—it’s bullshit. He’d been quiet so far and then he raised his hand, like, all polite, and just _slammed_ the reading, and the professor, too, but like so polite it takes you a moment to realize, you know? The professor was saying that because British culture is so different, especially for 18th, 19th century lit, that the theory’s viable or useful to consider, and Draco was like—that might be true about British culture, but it’s wrong, and it just means we aren’t reconsidering valuable muggle contributions. He finished by saying, like—” She puts on a passable, if shaky, posh English accent to say indignantly, “‘I’m actually British.’” 

Harry, not for the first time today, is not sure how to respond. After a silence that is probably too long, he just says, “Huh.”

“Doesn’t sound like your Draco?” Cam asks. 

“Ugh, don’t call him ‘mine,’” says Harry, wrinkling his nose. “And—no. It doesn’t.” 

“Hmm.” Cam shrugs. “Well, it’s what he said in class. When was the last time you saw him?” 

Harry does not like to think about the last time he saw Draco Malfoy. 

He testified for him before the Wizengamot, because he, Harry, was a kid who’d been forced into war, and he felt it was his duty to be honest, and valiant, and generous. Then, Malfoy looked like a ghost of himself—so pale he was nearly glowing in the Wizengamot’s chamber, so thin he could be snapped in half, his hair limp and even receding a bit, at only 18. Harry felt so strange and ambivalent about the whole thing, he threw up when he got home and didn’t talk to anyone for two days, until Hermione and Ron burst through his floo.

“We were 18,” Harry says shortly. 

“Long time ago,” Cam says.

“Maybe,” says Harry. “It was right after the war.”

“Ah.” 

“Yeah.”

By now, people have gotten out of classes, or they’ve woken up at a more reasonable hour to study—a steady stream of students open and shut the heavy doors, walk up and down the aisles, and situate themselves in tables and window seats with heavy books and notebooks and parchment. The place fills up with the scratching of quills and pens, the shuffling of pages and zipping of bags, low conversations and occasional bouts of muffled laughter behind study room doors. 

After both Cam and Harry have helped a number of people, pointing out the holds shelf, locating books, and grabbing reserves, and they are settled once again behind the desk, Cam says, “If there’s something about Draco…if there’s trauma, or if there’s something I should know…”

Harry feels very itchy under the collar now, agitated, like she’s poking too close to just-healed wounds. He doesn’t like that he feels this way. He’s been better than this about openness, about honesty, for a long time now. But he doesn’t want her to keep talking, so he says, “If he keeps talking like he’s been talking in class, then maybe he’s different.” 

“Okay,” Cam says carefully.

“I’m not in charge of who you’re friends with.” 

“Obviously. But I’m also not going to become friends with someone if they’re—if they’re you’re abuser, or a fucking—secret wizard supremacist—whatever it is.”

“He isn’t my…he didn’t used to have the best ideas about it all,” says Harry.

“It all?”

“Muggles. Muggle borns. What he said in class with you is very different from what he’s ever said to me or Hermione or Ron. Just…be careful. Okay? I know he’s done, um, like, community service and lived with muggles and whatever, but just…be careful.” 

“I will,” says Cam.

“And just—I’ve no idea what he’s like when it comes to women, but he never seemed to care much about his school girlfriend, so if _that’s_ where you’re going with this—”

“Uh, no,” says Cam, holding a hand up. “That’s okay, no thanks. I honestly didn’t even think he liked women.” 

Harry’s brain seems to stall like Sirius’ bike sometimes does.

“What?” he says stupidly.

Cam laughs. “You know, like, gay people?” she says, quoting a coworker who once said this to them, unaware they’re both queer. 

“Shut up,” says Harry. “I just never…no, he can’t be.”

Cam shakes her head. “I don’t know, man,” she says. “I got a vibe.” 

“A vibe?” Harry repeats.

“Can’t you ever just…tell?” 

Harry thinks about himself, and Cam, and some of Cam’s friends, and his ex-boyfriend, and some of Hermione's school friends, and apparently Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, from what he’s heard from Ron. “No,” he says. “I don’t think I can.”

“Bless your heart,” says Cam, patting him on the arm.

***

Friday night is Hermione’s birthday dinner.

Ron gets in from England about an hour before they’re meant to meet, so Harry meets them at the restaurant, gives them time to be together. He parks his bike and wanders around Coolidge Corner, nosing around the mysteries in Brookline Booksmith and people watching as people head to synagogue and dinner and the Coolidge Corner Theater, before heading to the tiny crepe place Hermione likes. 

Ron and Hermione are crossing the big intersection exactly when Harry leans against the window to wait. He grins at Ron’s familiar loping gate, at the glinting of the already setting sun off his bright hair, and waves. Ron waves back with the hand not holding Hermione’s, and when they get there, he grabs Harry into a big, back-clapping hug. 

“Heard it’s been an exciting week,” says Ron. 

“What?” says Harry.

“There’s a ferret in Boston?” says Ron, holding the restaurant door open for them both.

“Oh,” says Harry, wrinkling his nose.

Ron laughs loudly. “Yeah.” 

They manage to snag a table before too many people crowd into the little place. Ron always pretends there’s too many vegetables in the food here, but he always wolfs down everything they put in front of him, too. 

“How does it feel to be ancient, Hermione?” Ron asks when they get their food. 

“That’s what you want to hear from your boyfriend,” she says, cutting into her crepe. 

Harry laughs. 

“As if you care,” Ron snorts, mouth already full. He swallows, takes a big swig of Coke, and says, “You were going on and on for ages the other day about wisdom and old age and whatever. Can’t believe we’re getting so fucking old, though, once you get past twenty-five that’s _late twenties_.” 

“Absolutely ancient,” says Hermione.

“Hey, when you weren’t sure you’d get there…” says Harry, sipping his own fancy bottled water. He likes the food here, but the place is what Cam would call “bougie;” he wishes they’d just give him a fucking plain glass of water.

“Thanks—I wanted to call you some morbid philosopher’s name or something but I’m the stupid one so I don’t know any,” Ron says, but he says it easily, jokingly. He might once have resented his friends for their successes and skills, but in the past couple years, since he began switching back and forth between cities, he’s settled so much more comfortably into himself. He knows he isn’t actually the stupid one. 

“Well, he’s right,” says Hermione, “There was a time we didn’t know what it’d be like when we got to twenty-six.”

“Well, yeah,” says Ron. “But I don’t want to think about it _right now_, let a man eat a crepe.” 

They appease Ron and change the conversation to the progress on a Boston location for Wheezes. There’s nothing like Diagon Alley in Boston; there are places where there are more magical shops and homes than most, but nothing is cut off so completely from muggles—just subtly disguised or through back entrances or within buildings with other uses. A place like Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, however, is so obtrusive they’re having a bit of trouble finding the right spot.

As Hermione and Ron get into the finer points of real estate sale and rental, Harry’s mind drifts a bit. He’s never had a head for fiddly details the way they do. He eats his crepe and looks around at the other patrons of the restaurant. 

Across from them, a group of friends around their age are laughing loudly as they get up to leave. One of the men grabs his bag and throws it over his shoulder, and Harry sees a rainbow flag pinned to it. They make eye contact. Harry smiles quickly, hoping to convey _I am not staring because I disapprove, in fact, I have kissed multiple men_ the best he can. The man returns his smile and pushes the restaurant door open. When he gets out onto the sidewalk, he takes the hand of one of the men he was with, and they head off towards the intersection. 

Harry thinks about Cam’s “vibe” about Malfoy. 

What about Malfoy makes him seem like someone who is attracted to men? What made her think he didn’t like women at all? Harry doesn’t think he’s ever gotten this “vibe” about anyone. He wonders if he would if he’d been raised like a normal person. 

“Did you ever think Malfoy might be gay?” Harry asks abruptly. 

Hermione and Ron stare at him.

Harry realizes he interrupted them mid-conversation and wants to climb under the table. 

Ron bursts out laughing. 

Harry wants to climb under the table _more_. 

Ron’s laughing so loudly people are _looking_ at them. He has _tears_ in his eyes, from how hard he’s laughing. 

“Oh, Ron, stop it,” says Hermione.

“I don’t know what’s so funny!” says Harry. 

“Mate,” says Ron, wiping his eyes.

“Oh my god, I’m not _asking_ out of—Cam brought it up! I was _worried_ she might be interested in him, and she said she thought he was gay! I am expressing concern for my friend!”

“Of course,” says Ron. “Sure.” 

“What’s wrong with you?” says Harry. “It’s _Malfoy_.” 

“Oh, I know,” says Ron. “I hate the bloke.”

“Then what’s so fucking funny?”

“Harry, don’t raise your voice,” says Hermione. “Ron, you’re not being kind. It’s my birthday dinner, for Merlin’s sake. Harry, to answer your question, I wouldn’t be surprised if Malfoy was gay, but I doubt it’s really our business.” 

“Why can everyone tell if people are gay but me?” says Harry glumly. “You’re not supposed to be able to tell! I’m supposed to be able to tell!” 

“I can never tell,” says Ron. “‘Cept if they’re, you know.” He makes a vague gesture with his hand. Hermione shoots him a sharp look and he says, “Merlin, Hermione, what d’you think I’m going to say? You know you can just tell _sometimes_.” 

“You can’t,” Hermione says stubbornly.

“You just said you wouldn’t be surprised if Malfoy was gay!” says Ron.

“I _meant_,” says Hermione, looking a bit flustered, “That I’ve never seen him with women and didn’t think he was particularly interested in them at Hogwarts, but I shouldn’t have said it at all, because it’s none of our business.” 

“Well, I know how we can figure it out,” says Ron.

“I just _said_—” Hermione starts. 

“You can ask him out, Harry.” Ron bursts into laughter again, having a great big stupid chuckle at his own stupid joke. 

Harry scowls. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that, arsehole,” he says.

“Can we _please_ find another topic of conversation?” says Hermione.

“Yes, yes,” says Ron, grabbing her hand. “We love you and it is your birthday weekend, and we won’t talk about Malfoy anymore.”

“Good,” Hermione says, clearly trying not to smile as Ron smacks a stupid, loud kiss on her cheek. 

It’s been years since that sort of thing has made Harry feel at all maudlin, but right now he feels…funny. He doesn’t know why, but his brain places a memory before him in this moment—a memory of eating at another restaurant, a taco place, with Hermione and Ron and Harry’s ex, Andrew. 

Harry does not really _miss_ Andrew, not anymore. He’s long since realized Andrew was not a very good match for him. But that day was a good day. Andrew held his hand. It was weird, holding hands, something Harry wasn’t used to, and he thought he’d hate it, but he didn’t. He didn’t hate it at all. 

Andrew never wanted to do it again, but it was good then.

Harry feels very stupid when he realizes he’s sitting around wishing someone would hold his hand, and partly it’s because they were talking about _Draco Malfoy_. 

He hopes that against all odds he never sees him on campus again, at least not in the sort of way where they’re expected to speak to each other, because he’s not going to be able to look him in the eye. He _doesn’t_ want to ask Malfoy out, Merlin, but it is very hard to look in the face of someone attractive (and he is that, objectively, there’s nothing to be done there) when you’ve been teased about asking them out. Especially when they’re _not_ a good person, and whatever Cam says, Harry can’t imagine a world where Malfoy’s good.

***

Of course, when Harry turns up to work on Saturday, a request has come in from “100370—D. Malfoy” again.

He should ignore it. He should let someone else deal with it.

But if Harry’s ever been anything, it’s too nosy for his own good. 

He bends over the request book and, without even reading the title, marks the request “taken.” The requests turn up in a series of interconnected magical books on each desk in the library, and any clerk can fulfill them; to avoid two people out on the same search, there are two tick boxes next to each request: “taken” and “fulfilled.” 

Students and professors use a small book they’re given at the university’s orientation to write their requests in, and the writing appears in the books, something a bit like Tom Riddle’s stupid diary, except the words don’t vanish until the books are picked up and a clerk vanishes them. “Why do we vanish them?” Harry remembers asking when he first started here. “What if people need to remember a book they got before—or what if someone uses a dark book for something? We’d have their name right there.”

Cam told him to stop “thinking like a cop.” “That’s exactly why we vanish them,” she told him. “I think it’s kind of a scary world if cops can just demand to see whatever you’re reading. Didn’t y’all just have to deal with a government takeover?” 

Harry thought about how detrimental it would have been to the DA if Umbridge could see whatever they were reading and decided she was probably right, and also that he liked Cam.

Harry turns from his check mark to look at the title next to “D. Malfoy.” There’s just one: _The Invisible Book of Invisibility_. 

He groans, and not for the first time, he wishes he read—or thought about—things before rushing in. 

“Oh, God, why,” says the head librarian, an older woman named Julie who’s been doing this so long it’s possible she knows everything there is to know. She is peering over his shoulder, the look of someone who’s seen everything in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Harry, finders keepers _and_ weepers.” She begins rooting around in a drawer at the main desk, which holds several keys neatly organized in boxes by category—_class reserve_, _ancient_, _rare_, _frequently stolen_, _noisy_, _aggressive_, _poisonous_. Harry watches in dismay as she opens a box labeled only with an angry face drawn in red ink. There’s only one key inside. 

“What if it’s highly likely this is targeted harassment?” he asks.

“Sorry to hear it, but don’t expect me to get harassed in your place,” says Julie briskly, and Harry supposes this is fair enough. She drops a bright red key in his hand. “See you on the other side.”

This seems a bit much of a send off, considering the book’s in a locked case all by itself and is not “poisonous” or “aggressive.” But when one of the student clerks, Rosa, walks out from the back just in time to see the exchange, she says, “Oh, dude,” like Harry’s just walked in wearing a really embarrassing outfit he spent a lot of money on, or announced he’s going to participate in the “hot dog eating contest” one of the covens always does in the spring. Like there’s nothing she can do to stop him, but she wishes there was.

“Merlin,” says Harry, a bit irritated now. “I’ll make it out alive, I promise.”

Rosa gives him a little salute.

The book is in a case near the front entrance. It’s important, Julie says, to not look like they’re trying to prevent access to books they have to lock up. It’s enough that people don’t want to ask anyone for anything. It’s important, at least, to make sure people know they’re there. Harry walks by the cases containing _The Monster Book of Monsters_, _The Work of Edvard Munch_, and a crumbling tome entitled _Secrets of the Nile_ before approaching the case labeled _The Invisible Book of Invisibility_. Naturally, it looks empty, but there’s no way it is. The book is under lock and key. It’s monitored carefully. There’s no reason at all it’d be anywhere else. 

The case is empty.

Harry gropes around it in despair, running his hands all along the glass sides, inevitably marking them up with his fingerprints, and finds nothing.

“What if I can prove he doesn’t actually need this book?” Harry asks at the front desk in desperation. 

“We still have to _find_ it, Harry,” Julie says impatiently. “The record for most reorders of this book during a librarian’s career is fifteen, and right now I’m only two behind Ferguson Floop. I will not tie his record, let alone beat it. I will not. He was an _incompetent._” 

And so the rest of Harry’s day is thrown completely off course as the library enacts, clearly not for the first or last time, a hunt for _The Invisible Book of Invisibility_. 

Word, somehow, gets out, and Harry learns that such an event at the Tituba Library is really and truly an _event_, one that hasn’t happened for four years now. First, a gaggle of history students turn up to ask if they can help look, and then people start turning up with cameras or in giggling groups pretending they’re there for totally normal, everyday reasons. Spontaneous picnics appear on the front lawn, boom boxes and iPods blasting songs of wildly different genres with names like “Invisible Touch,” “Invisible Kid,” and “The Invisible Man,” Queen clashing with one of those mellow, harmonizing boy bands that all sound the same to Harry. A reporter from the school paper starts asking people questions. Somebody tries to sell “invisible buttons” until campus security chases him away. 

“This is what I wanted to avoid,” Julie says hollowly. She’s gone very pale some time in the past hour. They’ve all given up trying to keep the library at all quiet or orderly; there are students everywhere sticking their hands in the shelves, feeling around the floor, moving the furniture, taking pictures of themselves in front of the case in which _The Invisible Book of Invisibility_ should be. Julie stands at the main desk downstairs in the middle of it all looking like she’s watching her kingdom get raided. “But we can’t infringe on their right to free speech and assembly,” she continues, sounding rather like, in this moment, she’d give up the whole constitution if it meant the library was in order again. 

In America, Harry has learned, the statute of secrecy and the rights to free speech and assembly run up against each other a lot more than he’s used to, at least on a college campus—in his few years here, he’s seen dozens of demonstrations, boycotts, and blatantly magical events authorities find it impossible to reign in. On Halloween, they just give up. The Covens throw such audacious parties that people are already starting to prepare, and rumor has it muggles often show up, though accounts differ on whether they know they’re partying among actual witches.

“Hey, excuse me, can I ask you guys a question?”

Julie, Harry, and Rosa all turn to look at a guy with long hair and a denim jacket. He leans his elbow against the desk like he owns it. Rosa scowls, looking very much like she knows this person and is not thrilled about it. “What do you want, Joey?” 

“Is the library not a repository for free information?” the guy, Joey, asks. He sounds a bit like Hermione’s friend, who is from New York, only his accent is stronger. His jacket has patches and buttons on it that say things like “More Trees, Less Bush,” “Fuck Pure Blood,” “Queer Nation,” “Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?” “Werewolf Commie Jew,” and “Green Day,” whatever that last one means. Harry’s a little taken aback by how openly he appears to be saying he’s a werewolf. He’s never seen anything like that before. 

“What do you need?” Julie asks, clearly fighting to stay polite.

“Who requested the book?” he asks, leaning even further over the desk. Harry notices his “big bad wolf” badge says underneath it in smaller text, “The American Society for Werewolf Rights, Est. 1980.” “That’s why we’re lookin’ for it, right? Somebody requested it?”

“We don’t release that information,” Julie snaps. 

“Word,” says Joey. He smacks his hand against the desk like he’s in a film about lawyers. “What am I thinking?” He points to them each in turn, says, “Libraries are sick. More power to ya,” and leaves.

Rosa rolls her eyes. “That guy’s in Defense with me,” she says. “He’s that annoying _all_ the time.”

As Joey walks out of the library, he nods and holds the door open for Cam, whose shift begins when Harry leaves today. She looks resigned, like someone who’s spent all morning psyching herself up for this. “Any luck?” she says hopefully when she gets to the desk.

“No,” they say in miserable unison. 

“And there won’t be if we’re all standing around here,” says Julie. “Rosa, you take the desk. Cam, you’re a fresh pair of eyes, we need somebody looking on the first floor now that Harry’s leaving.” 

“I don’t have anywhere to be after this,” says Harry. “I can look some more, if you want.”

“I can’t pay you for it,” says Julie. 

Harry shrugs. “I’m kind of used to not being paid for things.”

“That doesn’t mean you should keep on doing it,” says Cam.

“At this point,” says Harry. “I kind of feel like I need to see it through.”

“Who the fuck did this?” says Cam as she deposits her bag behind the desk. “Who requested this? I know for a fact it’s not on any course reserve lists.” 

Harry looks around to see if Julie’s still listening; she is already on her way upstairs. He doesn’t think it’s wrong to share with his coworkers, but still. “Would you believe Draco Malfoy?” he says.

“No,” says Cam.

“Yes,” he says.

“Oh, he better not have done it on purpose.” 

“I have a strong feeling he did it on purpose.” 

“Okay, fuck that,” she says. “That’s just _rude_.” For someone who can be very intimidating and straightforward, Cam is consistently outraged by rudeness; she says it’s the Southern in her. 

“That’s Malfoy,” says Harry. 

It takes another hour before someone finds it, and when they do, several things happen at once.

First, Draco Malfoy walks into the library, and both Harry and Cam zero in on him immediately and exchange looks of contempt through the bookshelf between them. He is glad to have her on his side now, at least in this moment—it makes the world seem more sensible. 

Then, denim jacket Joey comes running back into the library, busting the heavy front doors open so hard the _bang_ makes nearly everyone jump, including Malfoy, who clutches his chest stupidly, like an old man. Joey is followed by a crowd of students, some dressed a lot like him, others not, all cheering “Joey! Joey! Joey!”

Julie comes running from the second floor to identify and stop the commotion, but before she can say anything Joey shouts, “Looking for _this_?” and shakes a hand that appears to be clutching nothing in the air. 

By this time, Harry and Cam have run to the desk, too, though Harry’s not even sure why—if it’s out of curiosity and the need to be a part of an Event or a weird instinct to protect the library. Rosa says something in Spanish under her breath, and Harry, despite knowing no Spanish at all, would bet it’s a swear word or two. 

Julie takes the book from Joey gingerly. “I’ll need to test it,” she says, taking out her wand.

The growing crowd watches with bated breath while she runs her wand over whatever is sitting in her hand. It probably would be easier to place on the desk, but Harry thinks she is afraid to let go of it. 

The thing glows briefly purple, a book shaped glow, before fading again.

“This is it,” she says.

The crowd goes wild. 

“Give it up for Joey Schwartz!” shouts one of the guys next to him, grabbing Joey’s wrist and shaking it in the air.

The students take up the cheer of “Joey! Joey! Joey!” again. 

Malfoy, standing a bit back from the crowd, seems to be slowly understanding what’s going on. His face has gone very pink, and he’s fidgeting relentlessly with his bag. 

“Who requested this book?” Joey shouts. 

“Excuse me—” Julie starts.

“I know privacy’s your right!” Joey continues, like a man making a speech. He turns slowly in a circle, apparently trying to address everyone at once, gesturing wildly all over the place. “And if you prefer to stay masked, you stay masked! But if you’re here, I’d like to shake your hand! It’s only through you that I achieved this glory!”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake!” says Julie. “Thank you for your help, but this is enough. This is a place of—”

To Harry’s great surprise, Malfoy steps forward and says, “It was me.”

The crowd falls silent.

Harry thought Malfoy’d do a runner, the coward he is, but here Malfoy is, saying, “I requested it.” 

Harry has no idea how people are actually going to react to this—is Malfoy supposed to be a hero, as Joey is playing it? Or is he the villain, a rude arsehole forcing everyone to do all this work? What will this mass of American students think? After three years here, Harry’s really not sure. 

The crowd, once again, goes wild.

Joey runs forward and gives Malfoy’s hand an exaggerated politician shake, clapping him hard on the back. Malfoy looks like he doesn’t know quite what to do. His face is even pinker now. “What is your name, sir?” Joey asks. He appears to have adopted the accent of the muggle President. 

“Draco Malfoy.”

“Draco Malfoy!” Joey shouts, thrusting Malfoy’s hand in the air like he’s a victorious boxer, and then everyone is cheering, “Draco! Draco! Draco!” and Harry thinks he might be in a nightmare and pleads with his subconscious to wake him up.

He hopes, at least, that Malfoy will melt with embarrassment. But then he _bows_. He bows to the crowd like a performer, and Harry is forced to remember every single time Malfoy strutted around doing impressions in the Great Hall, the “Potter Stinks” badges, “Weasley Is Our King.” 

“THAT IS _ENOUGH_!” Julie shouts. Harry has never heard her shout, and he doesn’t think anyone else here has, either, judging by the way they scatter. 

Malfoy doesn’t even pick up the fucking book.

***

Malfoy doesn’t request another library book for a long while. Harry thinks he might be afraid to step foot in the place after Julie’s shouting and the telling off Cam claims to have given him, and this idea is further cemented when Hermione reports spotting him in both Harvard Books and Alse Young Books, its magical equivalent, wrinkling his nose at price stickers.

But even so, Harry sees him—and hears about him—fucking everywhere.

Harry’s not even a student at the stupid university. 

But everywhere Harry goes, anywhere _near_ Harvard Square, there’s Malfoy—studying outside a Dunkin Donuts—eating lunch with denim jacket Joey and his friends—smoking a cigarette outside Harvard Yard—through the window at the fucking Curious George shop, of all places. 

Harry even sees him at the _common_ when he’s trying to take a peaceful walk after therapy, several T stops away from where Malfoy ought to be. He and goddamn denim jacket Joey are sitting under a tree eating nachos out of styrofoam takeout containers. Malfoy, on the grass in the October leaves, wearing jeans, eating nachos—with his hands! And with, presumably, a werewolf, who is laughing delightedly at whatever Malfoy is saying. He’s got a face on like he’s doing an impression again. There’s a fucking badge on his bag now, too, though Harry can’t read it from the distance. He remembers Joey’s “Queer Nation” badge, and he remembers Cam’s claim she “got a vibe” from Malfoy. 

Harry does not have the time or space to examine why this makes him angry.

Cam talks about Malfoy’s opinions on books. Julie mutters under her breath about him whenever she gets in a bad mood. A group of freshmen with DADA 101 books sit up on the defense floor of the library asking where “dad” is until one of them comes up to the desk and asks Harry if he’s seen Draco Malfoy. 

Harry’s going to lose his mind.

His therapist asks him if perhaps he’s simply noticing Malfoy more because he’s expecting to see or hear about him, dreading it and looking out for it. 

Harry thinks that’s a load of shit. 

“He’s—he’s getting his _Malfoy_ all over the place!” Harry bursts out one evening at Ron and Hermione’s. The moment Ron starts laughing, Harry grabs a pillow from the couch and chucks it hard, dead in Ron’s face. 

“Oi!” yells Ron. “Stop saying shit like that and I’ll stop laughing!”

“I knew this would happen,” Hermione says darkly, scratching something out viciously with her quill. Americans use actual pens far more often, but Harry thinks Hermione likes the aesthetic of quill and parchment, not that she’d ever admit to something so frivolous. 

“That Malfoy would come to the states?” says Harry.

“No!” says Hermione. She looks rather like she wants to start chucking pillows as well. “That you would be like this about it! Or—well I suppose I was worried it would happen, but I thought to myself, it’s okay, we are all so much more mature. Harry’s doing so well! He won’t be like this! And yet!” 

“Ouch,” says Harry. 

This does, genuinely, hurt. Mostly because…she’s probably right.

It probably _is_ stupid, the way he’s acting. They’re halfway through October, and Malfoy hasn’t spoken to him once since their first meeting. Harry knows enough about notoriety and…well, obsession to know how obnoxious it is when people assume everything you do has something to do with them, and not with simply living your life. Malfoy, he thinks grudgingly, probably has a right to eat lunch with his friends and help freshmen study for DADA and even go to the Curious George shop. Probably. 

Harry acknowledges this mature train of thought out loud by huffing and sinking further into the couch.

Ron pats his shoulder. “I get it, mate,” he says. “I’m being an arse, but I get it. It’s Malfoy.” 

Harry doesn’t feel much like _saying it_ to Ron and Hermione, but he privately resolves to calm the fuck down about this.

And then Malfoy sends in another request.

Harry finishes putting together holds for student 100227, R. Trites—_Does God Hate Witchcraft?: Religious Perspectives on Magic_ and _Great Witches of the 20th Century_—and looks at the next on the list to find “100370—D. Malfoy.” It’s one title: _Enemies in the City: Dealing With Rodent Pests_. 

Harry is furious.

After the _Invisible Book of Invisibility_ debacle, after Malfoy’s appearances in every place to get books _but_ the library, Harry’s convinced this is deliberate. There’s no way Malfoy couldn’t find this book in a shop, if he really needed to deal with rodents. Doesn’t he live in the dorms, as a freshman, even if he is twenty five? Don’t they have people to deal with this sort of thing for them? This is a dig. This is meant for Harry to find.

Harry stomps furiously over to the catalogue, pointing his wand at the enormous book and thinking, _rodents_.

When Malfoy shows up just an hour after Harry marks the request ready, he doesn’t have one book waiting for him, but a bundle of two—his requested book and _My Life As A Rat_ by Joyce Carol Oates.

Harry watches covertly as Malfoy frowns at the books marked with his name and ID number. He’s wearing a sweater that looks like something Remus might have worn, back in the day, brown and clearly quite old. It’s too big, in contrast to his stupid jeans, and he keeps pushing up the sleeves. He seems to have gotten his hair cut recently. It looks stupid—it’s too short, and it makes his face look pointier. 

Malfoy sighs, pinches his nose, picks up both books, and walks to the desk like he’d rather be anywhere else. “Hello,” he says, clearly forcing politeness. “Er, how are you?”

Harry stares at him.

Malfoy sighs and drops the bullshit. “I, too, am just _thrilled_ to see you,” he drawls. “Such a pleasure, etc.” He wiggles his fingers on “etc” like he’s sending something away. “I only requested one of these, and I could just take this one—” He places the Joyce Carol Oates book on the desk. “—but out of the goodness of my heart, I’m here to give it back in case it belongs to someone else.” 

“Oh, it’s for you,” says Harry.

Malfoy blinks. He drops another layer of bullshit. His shoulders slump. “What?” 

“I just thought,” says Harry, “That if you were going to try to send messages with books, I could send them back. Give you something else you might relate to.” 

Malfoy looks back at the title on the desk in front of him. “What are you talking about, Potter?” 

“Takes one to know one,” Harry says, shrugging. “That’s all.” 

“Are you fucking—” Malfoy steps back and covers his eyes as though he’s embarrassed to even look at Harry. After a long moment, in which mild panic starts to brew in the pit of Harry’s stomach, Malfoy takes his hand from his face and says, “Alright, sure. You got my message. I got yours. Fantastic. That’s what we’re doing now.” 

“Yeah,” Harry says, relieved, because he thought for a moment…well, it’s good to know Malfoy did do this on purpose. It’s good to have a correct hunch. “I guess it is.” 

“Guess I’ll take this fucking book, then,” says Malfoy, snatching it back up. 

“It _is_ for you,” says Harry, and in an overly cheery American customer service voice he adds, “Have a good one, Ferret.” 

Malfoy’s face hardens. He gives Harry the finger and storms out of the library.

Harry tries to pretend this victory feels better than it does.

***

The next book shows up the following week.

This time, Harry knows for sure it’s meant for him, because it’s a children’s book Malfoy undoubtedly has no actual use for—_The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners_. Harry doesn’t particularly want to go to the trouble of finding it, but he does, because he remembers someone else requesting a novel called _Glass Houses_ recently, and it’s the perfect thing to slip in with it. 

Next, Harry receives a request for Emily Post’s _Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and At Home_, which he puts on the shelf with _A Good First Step: A First Step Workbook for Twelve Step Programs_, and it case it isn’t clear, a wizarding children’s book called—he can’t believe his luck—_Congratulations, Mr. Ferret!_

Both times, he misses Malfoy picking them up, but he can’t ask anyone about the look on his face when he gets them. That seems weird. 

It takes a few days for another request from D. Malfoy to come in after Emily Post, and in those days Harry begins to wonder if he took it too far. It’s not that he’s worried he crossed some kind of line regarding insults—he didn’t, and if he did, he couldn’t give a shit. It’s Malfoy. But he does worry he put in too much effort—that it’s embarrassing, the amount of time he put into finding the perfect book with “congratulations” in the title, and the joy he felt when he did find it. He is afraid he should be embarrassed, and that Malfoy’s known that all along.

Then, the day before the Halloween break, just when Harry’s getting into a nice good brood about it, Cam says, “There’s a request in from your best friend.” 

Harry straightens up. “Malfoy?”

Cam rolls her eyes. “Yes,” she says, pulling the request book towards her. “But it’s not any fun to say if you don’t act insulted about it.” 

“I’m very insulted,” Harry assures her. “I’ll get it.” 

“It’s fine,” says Cam. She picks up a pen. “I’ll get it.” 

“No, really,” Harry says, standing up. “I’ll do it.”

She squints at him, her pen poised over the tick box marked “taken.” “Are you going to do anything weird?”

“No,” Harry says, too quickly.

Cam looks down at the book. Harry looks, too. The requested title is _Hate You Forever: How to Channel Your Rage into Effective Supervillainy_.

To Harry’s surprise, he laughs out loud.

“Hmm,” says Cam.

“What?” says Harry. He snatches a piece of paper to copy down the call number. “It’s a funny title.”

“Sure,” says Cam, ticking the “taken” box. “Have fun.” 

Harry bundles it with two other books—_I Hate You More_—which is, weirdly, a romance novel, one of many by a witch he doesn’t think is actually called Wanda Light—and _Don’t Get Any Ideas: The Pitfalls of Lecture-Only Education in Wizarding Universities_.

He wishes he could see Malfoy pick them up this time, but the library closes early this Saturday, and Malfoy doesn’t show up before then. 

They close early because Halloween is Monday, and the university will be closed Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday for the occasion. Harry loves Halloween in America—some people call it Samhain, some people fight over whether they’re the same, but regardless, the magical community cherishes the days. The university buildings have been plastered since September with flyers for bonfires, ghost pageants and parades, costume contests, historical film showings, Jack-O-Lantern carving and contests, the Cambridge Wizard Council’s annual Samhain fair and—arguably more important and popular—the university’s Coven parties. 

Harry went to a Coven party with Ron and Hermione his first year in Boston, Hermione there mostly because they’ve gone on since the Salem trials and it’s something “historical,” and—well. Harry doesn’t need to do it again. It may have been the catalyst for his bi awakening—he spent a portion of the night snogging a senior Coven brother who kept calling him “bro” even though they were making out—but at 25, in a better place, he is no longer interested in drinking so much he forgets most of the rest of the night, nor has he ever loved loud crowds. 

And yet, Harry _is_ going to a party this year. Just not a Coven one. He feels it’s been long enough now that he can stomach a crowd, and Cam has finally convinced him it will be different enough that he’ll enjoy it. She thinks he doesn’t hang out with People Like Him enough. He thinks he hangs around with plenty of People Like Him—traumatized, headstrong—but he knows she means his closest friends are straight. “It’s not about _dating_,” she said when Harry told her he hasn’t been particularly in the mood for that. “It’s about feeling like a part of something.” 

So he, Cam, and some of her friends are going to a party that was advertised on an iridescent rainbow flyer reading THE SPECTRUM COLLECTIVE’S ANNUAL HALLOWEEN BASH: MEET DEAD QUEER ACTIVIST JIMMY SPECTACULAR, GO WILD FOR OUR DRAG PAGEANT HOSTED BY THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, GET FREAKY. Harry does not feel particularly interested in “getting freaky,” but Cam assures him her friend Danny, the maker of the flyers, just thinks he’s being funny.

Harry drives home on his motorbike and already feels, despite Malfoy’s annoying book antics, warm and content and part of something. The various holidays of his neighbors have coincided in such a way that as the huts from Sukkot are coming down and Hermione’s street readies to dance with the Torah at a block party, both Halloween and Eid are getting ready to begin. Decorations of all kinds cover the houses on his way home, and every child he sees seems alight with the excitement in the air. As is his habit, he revs the bike for some children, who shout in delight and wave at him.

“Yeah, nice big dick, asshole!” someone yells at him, and Harry responds with the finger, but it doesn’t even take away from the experience—if anything, it adds to it. What a place he lives in now. 

Gwen feels the charge in the air, too. When he says hello to her, she says, _Humans are getting ready_.

“_Yeah_,” he says. He doesn’t stroke her, conscious of the atmosphere. _A lot of things are happening soon_. 

_You feel happy_,” she says, after flicking her tongue in and out a few times. 

Harry pauses. Huh. “_Yeah_,” he says. “_I do_.”

***

Cam’s right. The queer party is much better than a Coven party.

While the Coven parties take place in the enormous old Coven houses on Brattle Street, decked out in their full haunted house glory, often smoky and barely lit, the Halloween ball is in a large gymnasium at a community center Harry didn’t know existed, even though it’s so near his apartment he doesn’t need to take his bike. Outside, it looks like a nondescript former muggle doctor’s office; inside, there are meeting rooms, a clinic, and the gym. There’s even a preschool on the top floor. 

Judging by the front room, the place caters to all sorts of magical people in need of special services—flyers advertise support groups for werewolves, vampires, squibs, transgender people, and trauma survivors, and there’s a wall of pamphlets like _Pregnancy, Lycanthropy, and You_, _Safe Sex for MSM_, _I’m Gay—What Now?_, _What If My Child’s A “Squib?”: A Resource for Parents of Low and Non Magic Children_, and _The American Vampire Coalition’s Ethical Blood Source Directory_.

Harry wonders if places like this exist in England—if he just didn’t know and didn’t have anyone to tell him about them. 

Privately, he admits he had a very specific image of what this kind of party might be like, one he didn’t think would appeal to him. And there _is_ a drag pageant, and there _are_ people baring more skin he could ever feel comfortable baring, and they’re playing music like _I’m Coming Out_, and he couldn’t be more different from Cam’s friend Danny, who seems to love the way his high pitched cackle carries and turns heads. 

But Harry realizes what he feels, mostly, is a little intimidated, a little lacking, surrounded by all these people who put loads of effort into their costumes and don’t care if people see them dancing. When he realizes that, he relaxes, because he knows who he is, and he relaxes even more when he spots a group of guys dressed half-heartedly in quodpot gear, putting in about the same amount of effort as he did with the old quidditch robes he’s wearing. One of them even smiles and winks at him in a way that makes his knees feel a little funny.

The punch is good. Danny is actually as funny as he thinks he is. The drag queens are talented, and the energy they bring to the crowd feels good. He likes seeing Cam flirt with someone with “they” pronouns and a shaved head. He likes that he doesn’t have to be self conscious about men thinking he’s flirting with them. He even dances and doesn’t hate it, with one of the quodpot boys and a girl at least five inches taller than him who may or may not have red hair and freckles, but it’s _fine_, it’s just nobody can tell Ron. He’s having a great time, actually, and then—he sees Malfoy.

Malfoy is here. 

Malfoy is in the corner by the punch with Denim Jacket Joey and some people Harry doesn’t recognize. 

This would confirm Cam’s theory about Malfoy—her _vibe_—if Malfoy didn’t look extraordinarily uncomfortable. 

He isn’t wearing a costume—or if he is, Harry doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be, other than a twenty-something wizard wearing all black and looking like a fish out of water at a gay party. He keeps staring at people and then jerking his attention back to his drink or his feet; even from this distance Harry can tell he’s close to fidgeting right out of his skin. 

The song changes from a song about licking lollipops—undoubtedly contributing to Malfoy’s discomfort—to _A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love_. 

To Harry’s surprise, every goes absolutely mad. He associates Celestina Warbeck with Molly Weasley. But even the quodpot boys are running onto the dance floor, all shouting, “I’ve got a cauldron full of hot, strong love and it’s bubbling for you!”

It’s been a while since American culture has made Harry feel a little to the left of normal, but now the feeling he’s missed something returns. For a brief moment, he sympathizes with Malfoy; he can see him across the dancing crowd looking hopelessly confused as the rest of his friends abandon him due to an inexplicable American—or gay—or gay American—adoration of Celestina Warbeck. 

Harry has clearly had more punch than he thought, because this sympathy goes so far he finds himself making his way across the dance floor to Malfoy’s side. 

Before he can think better of it, he provides Malfoy with the incredibly witty conversation starter, “I guess Americans love Celestina Warbeck.”

Malfoy startles so badly he slops alcohol down his arm.

Harry realizes Malfoy’s wearing eyeliner. The stark black doesn’t look particularly good on his pale skin, and it’s smudged on his left eye, but Harry has a feeling it’s still applied too well for Malfoy to have done it himself. 

Harry could make fun of him. But far more obvious than the eyeliner, and more important to Harry, is the panic in Malfoy’s expression as Harry witnesses him wearing eyeliner at a gay party. 

It isn’t the first time Harry’s experienced Malfoy looking like a caged animal, but it is, he thinks, the first time he’s recognized the feeling as one he’s felt—at least one he’s felt this deeply, this exactly. 

“Er,” says Harry. “Hold on.” 

He turns and jogs over to the drinks and snacks, shouting stupidly over his shoulder, “I’m not running away!”

He grab a wad of napkins, ignoring the gaggle of lesbians laughing at him, and returns to find Malfoy as frozen as he left him. Awkwardly, he thrusts the napkins in Malfoy’s direction. “Er,” he says again. “All right?” 

Malfoy rolls his eyes so hard Harry imagines it might hurt. “Hold my drink,” Malfoy says shortly, shoving the plastic pumpkin shaped cup into Harry’s hand. Napkins flutter to the floor. He takes out his wand to dry his arm. 

Oh. Yeah.

Malfoy puts his wand away and snatches his drink back. “What are you doing here?” he says in clipped tones, completely failing to acknowledge the napkins in Harry’s hands and on the floor.

Harry stuffs the remaining napkins in his pockets. Once upon a time, saying what he’s about to say to Malfoy would have felt like just up and handing Voldemort the Elder wand, but they’re adults, and judging by the fear in Malfoy’s eyes…

Harry shrugs. “You know,” he says awkwardly. “My crowd.” 

Malfoy’s eyes go so wide he looks like he might be experiencing a medical emergency. A little more of his drink slops out onto his long fingers. 

Harry repeats, “All right?” He only just resists the urge to reach out to hold Malfoy up. 

“You’re not…” says Malfoy, almost breathlessly. He clears his throat. He doesn’t wipe or magic the spilt alcohol off his hand. “I mean, surely you’re not.” 

“Yeah, I’m queer,” says Harry, and Malfoy winces. “Er, I’m bi,” Harry clarifies. 

“Oh,” says Malfoy. He swallows hard—Harry watches the bob of his Adam’s apple. “Er, uh, Joey says that as well, I mean…Joey as well.”

Harry doesn’t think he’s ever seen Malfoy so flustered, which is saying a lot. “Is Joey your boyfriend?” asks Harry, trying his absolute best to sound friendly and not like he’s going to call up a newspaper about it. 

Malfoy goes scarlet almost instantaneously; it’s impressive. “No!” he says. “God, no, he’s—we’re friends, we’re both majoring in Curse Breaking, and I’m not—” He stops and swallows again. 

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“Okay,” Harry says, and he’s shocked by how gentle he sounds. It’s shocking to find himself speaking that way to Malfoy because it’s Malfoy, but it’s also a surprise to find himself speaking gently…at all. He doesn’t think “gentle” is the first word that comes to mind when people think of him. “Curse breaking’s cool,” Harry tries. 

“Don’t pity me,” Malfoy snaps. 

“Why would I pity you?” Harry asks.

Malfoy seems to hunch in on himself, clutching his drink so tightly Harry fears the plastic cup will crack. His fierce blush shows no signs of fading. 

“I’ve never pitied you,” Harry adds.

Malfoy lets out a quiet laugh. “I suppose you haven’t.” 

Harry watches as Cam and the rest of her friends shout the final lyrics to _Cauldron Full of Hot Strong Love_ at each other. He smiles and turns back to Malfoy. “I mean it, curse breaking’s cool.”

Malfoy shrugs one shoulder, still clutching his drink tightly. “It’s a way to fix bad things,” he says. “To get rid of evil things.” He takes a long sip of his drinks and adds, “Erase mistakes.”

“Ah,” says Harry. He’s too intoxicated for this conversation, so he turns instead to, “You never picked up your hold. At the library.”

Malfoy tuts and, unbelievably, smiles along with Harry. “I was busy,” he says.

“Busy not being gay?” says Harry. He instantly regrets it, thinks it’s probably far too soon and too blunt, but Malfoy, unbelievably, laughs. It’s still a tiny, quiet huff of a laugh, but it’s a laugh.

“I dated a man for about half a year,” Harry offers. “Last time I dated anyone.” It’s one thing to tell Malfoy he’s bi, but it’s another to share these details like it’s nothing. Maybe he’s gone from tipsy to drunk, or maybe he just feels soft about people like him tonight, even if they’re Malfoy. 

“How on earth have you kept that a secret?” says Malfoy. “I mean—how have _you_?” 

“America,” says Harry, shrugging. 

The DJ takes them from _A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong Love_ to _It’s Raining Men_, saying “I’ve got the forecast for you this Halloween, ladies,” and the dance floor carries on shouting and jumping in excitement. 

“America,” Malfoy repeats, a little weakly.

Cam whips around and makes eye contact with Harry as though she’s about to gesture for him to join the dancing—then she spots Malfoy. She raises her eyebrows and bursts out laughing, turning back to the rest of her friends and leaving Harry to talk. He does not like the implications of this, but he lets her have her mistaken assumptions for now. 

Malfoy mumbles something, then stops talking immediately and takes a long sip of his drink. He looks around at the crowd, who have all begun to sing along, “Humidity’s rising! Barometer’s gettin’ low!” His face is still brilliantly pink, and Harry doesn’t think it’s likely to go away any time soon with a bunch of men shouting about getting “absolutely soaking wet” in front of him. 

“What?” Harry says over the music.

“I…I mean, is this—” Harry can’t hear the rest over the music. 

“Is it what?” says Harry.

Malfoy raises his voice again. “Is this—what you do?” 

Amused, Harry says, “What _I_ do, or what all gay people are supposed to do?” 

Malfoy doesn’t answer. 

“Once we sign the contract?” Harry continues.

Malfoy mutters something, and when Harry looks at him questioningly, he leans in closer and then says, far louder than necessary, “SHUT UP.” 

“This isn’t my usual scene, personally,” Harry says, letting up. “I’ve only ever met men at bars.” 

Malfoy stiffens even more at this, and Harry can’t tell what emotion is making his shoulders tense up so badly. His eyes flash with something intense, pained even, but Harry does not think it’s disgust. 

“It’s nice, though,” says Harry. “I mean, everyone’s nice here…I even danced!” God, before he walked over here he should have considered how chatty he gets when he’s been drinking.

“It’s…” Malfoy nods. 

“It’s a lot,” Harry assures him. 

Malfoy’s shoulders slump a little. “It’s a bit much.” 

“Cam wanted me to go,” says Harry.

“Joey insisted,” says Malfoy. 

“I’m glad I came, though,” says Harry. “She said it’s about feeling like a part of something. I get that.” 

The pained expression flits across Malfoy’s face again. He swigs the last of his drink down. 

“Want me to get you another?” Harry asks.

Malfoy stares at him. 

Thinking perhaps he didn’t hear him, Harry repeats himself.

“I know what you said!” says Malfoy. “But I…” 

“I’m not hitting on you,” says Harry, rolling his eyes. “I guess I, er, don’t know what I _am_ doing, but I’m pretty sure that’s not it.” 

He hopes he sounded sarcastic enough at the “pretty sure.” 

“Okay,” says Malfoy. His gaze drifts over to the quodpot boys, who left the dance floor after Celestina Warbeck. His eyes flick from their heads to their toes, his teeth worrying at his bottom lip, and then he starts, tears his eyes away, and says, “Fine, go, then.” 

“Ungrateful!” Harry shouts over the music, but he does it anyway. He really doesn’t know why. He could dance with someone again, or go join Cam. But he feels…intrigued by the sight of Malfoy so entirely outside of his element, and a little…something else. Maybe it’s empathy. 

Of course, he’s used to feeling empathy. He feels it too much sometimes. It’s just…it’s Malfoy. Having something in common with Malfoy is…unexpected. 

When Harry returns with Malfoy’s refilled drink, Joey has come back to Malfoy’s side. He’s wearing heavy eyeliner, tight ripped up jeans, and a shirt and tie; Harry doesn’t know if this is a costume or if, like Malfoy, this is just the sort of thing he’d wear any day. 

“_Oh_,” says Joey the minute he notices Harry. “I see.” 

“Shut up,” Malfoy snaps.

“You were waiting for _Harry Potter_ to bring you a _drink_,” says Joey. He grabs Malfoy’s cheek and pinches it. “My sweet little baby!” 

“_Stop_ it,” says Malfoy, shoving him away.

“Okay, okay, Jesus,” says Joey. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your crush.” 

“I don’t have a _crush_,” says Malfoy. 

“Oh, sorry, sorry,” says Joey, putting on a very terrible British accent, “The bloke you fancy.” 

“It’s definitely not like that,” says Harry, passing Malfoy his drink before Malfoy can murder Joey in public. “I just thought I’d show him what it’s like to be nice.”

“He does need that,” Joey says. “I don’t think we ever officially met. Joey Schwartz.” He engages Harry in one of those weird handshake/high-fives Harry’s never been able to get used to.

“Harry Potter,” Harry says. He’s also never been able to stop introducing himself, even when people have already referred to him by name. He’s less likely to be recognized in America, but it does happen. 

“Yeah, man,” says Joey. “I’m gonna say one weird thing because I smoked tonight and then I’ll never say anything like this to you again, okay? ‘Cause I get it’s probably weird.” He points at Harry’s face and says intensely, “I think you’re a great fuckin’ person. I think you’re a fuckin’ mensch, as my grandmother would say. You’re sick as hell and I just want you to know I respect the shit out of you.” He puts his finger down. “All right, I’m done, be safe with my son.” 

“I’m older than you,” says Malfoy, “By three years.” 

“Shit happens,” says Joey. 

“And I’m _not_—I mean, I don’t _fancy_ him!” Malfoy says sourly, and it is at this moment that there is a lull between songs. He shouts it into the quiet. People turn to look. 

“Honey, that accent!” someone says. “Will you ‘fancy’ _me_?” 

Malfoy looks too mortified to speak. 

Joey’s doubled over laughing.

When a new song starts, he turns to Joey and hisses, “I am _emancipating_ myself from you.”

“I thought you weren’t my son.”

“You’ve ruined my entire fucking life, Schwartz, and anyway I’m not friends with people who are obsessed with Harry Potter.”

“Fair, wouldn’t want anyone taking your role in the group,” says Joey, patting Malfoy on the back. He looks at Harry. “I love when he calls me by my last name, it’s like he’s gonna push me out of a tree to say something deep about World War II, ya know?” At the look on Malfoy’s face, Joey says, “Anyway, yeah, yeah, don’t listen to any of the shit I say, Harry, I’m a nuisance. I’ll get outta your hair, have fun, enjoy yourselves, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, curfew’s at dawn.” 

Even when he’s gone, Harry can still hear Joey chattering loudly to someone else. Presumably. He supposes he could easily be talking to himself. He thinks of the way Joey pronounced “dawn,” with a strong emphasis on the “w,” a drawn out “aw,” and says to Malfoy, “Where is he from?” 

“New Jersey,” says Malfoy. “Apparently it’s near New York.” Harry is tickled by this “apparently,” and allows himself to feel a little superior in his knowledge of states. “He describes it like it’s shit, but if anyone else says that he gets angry and starts talking about pizza.” 

Harry laughs. 

“I don’t…” Malfoy bites his lip.

“I know,” says Harry, guessing what Malfoy means to say—_I don’t fancy you_. 

Malfoy nods once. “Well,” he says. “I suppose I should—”

“Draco!” 

Cam has found them. 

“Oh—hello,” says Malfoy, and he stiffens again, like every person who sees him is another person who…knows. 

Cam grabs one of his hands. “I’m so glad to see you here,” she says firmly.

Malfoy takes in a sharp little breath, then nods again, jerkily. 

“Have your friends abandoned you?” She sucks her teeth. “Come sit with us.” When Malfoy’s eyes dart to Harry, Cam says, “Harry will be nice, I promise.”

And somehow, Harry ends up spending the rest of the night with Draco Malfoy. 

Malfoy mostly talks to Cam a lot, but Harry’s right there. And after another drink, Malfoy’s less tense, laughs more, stops darting his eyes around the room in search of enemies or an audience. A couple times, a man’s eyes land on Malfoy with interest, and Harry gets the strange urge to guard him from it— because obviously Malfoy’s not ready for men he doesn’t know to look at him like that. 

Eventually, Joey joins them, too, and Harry finds him quite funny. Cam goads him about Jersey and he goads her about the south. Everyone starts talking about their shitty exes and loudly denouncing them. Malfoy admits he likes the song _Baby One More Time_. By the end of the night, it doesn’t even feel weird, the mixing of these friends. 

At the party’s end, they mingle outside the building, figuring out who’s going where and how, but not in any particular rush. Malfoy, who has loosened up considerably by now, is smoking a cigarette. Harry doesn’t like smoking himself—it just hurts, really. Occasionally, he’ll smoke weed with Cam, but it’s often not really worth it. 

“Why do you smoke?” he asks Malfoy.

Malfoy quirks an eyebrow. He releases a cloud of it. “Oral fixation,” he says, and then—Harry can think of no other way to describe it—he _giggles_.

Harry feels weird. He’s drunk, that’s probably it. He feels weird because he’s drunk. They’re both drunk.

Malfoy looks at him for a long moment, his eyes boring into Harry’s in a way Harry doesn’t know how to handle. He puts his cigarette out and vanishes it—without even using a wand. 

“Impressed, Potter?” Malfoy asks, preening.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Harry. 

When Malfoy rolls his eyes, Harry smiles.

Malfoy smiles back. 

And then it drops, and he announces solemnly, “My father would kill me.” 

Harry blinks. The night air seems to go from pleasant to a strong chill in seconds. Goosebumps appear along his arms. Everyone else is still chatting and laughing amongst themselves. “What?” Harry says. It’s a stupid response.

“If he saw me here,” says Malfoy quietly, “Like this? He’d kill me.”

And Harry knows this is not hyperbole, and suddenly feels _something_ so intensely he wants to hit something or kick something or scream. 

He doesn’t know what is appropriate to say to something like this. “He’s a coward and a monster,” says Harry.

To Harry’s horror, tears spring to Malfoy’s eyes. 

“He is,” Harry insists. “Anyone who would react that way is shit and doesn’t deserve to know you.” 

He’s a little puzzled over his own assertion that people need to deserve to know Malfoy. He thinks Malfoy might be puzzled too. 

“You okay there, Draco?” says Joey. 

“I want to go home now,” says Malfoy. He still has tears in his eyes.

“Okay,” says Joey, more kindly than Harry has seen him all night. “Okay, let’s go home. There’s a school portkey spot right up the street.” 

“I’m so glad you came, Draco,” says Cam, and her sentiment is echoed earnestly by her friends and Joey’s. Cam hugs him, and a bunch of voices echo, “We’re so glad you came!” 

“You’re a star, Draco,” Joey murmurs to him as they walk off down the street. 

Harry walks home trying to adjust to how quickly the joy of the night deflated. He’s glad he walked, instead of taking the bike. He needs the time to clear out his head.

***

When Harry gets to work on Wednesday, he’s tired and irritable, and Malfoy still hasn’t picked up his holds. In a fit of sentimentality, or stupidity, or something, Harry finds another book to go with them—_I’m OK, You’re OK_.

He doesn’t know what the fuck’s inside the book—it’s an old, undoubtedly outdated self help book with a soft, creased cover and yellowed pages—but it’s the easiest, least stupid title he can find, the one least likely to set him on fire with embarrassment at having expressed some kind of outward kindness to Malfoy. And still, when he comes back from gathering another set of requests to find Malfoy’s books gone, Harry feels a rush of mortification—and some relief he didn’t have to witness Malfoy picking the books up. 

Hermione comes to pick him up from the library after his shift. She’s fresh out of class and looking windswept and about as irritable as him, a yellow knitted scarf courtesy of Molly Weasley thrown loosely around her neck. “Fancy a burger?” she asks. 

Harry weighs the often draining intensity of an irritated Hermione against the distraction an irritated Hermione might bring him. Then he thinks of drinking an entire cold, American sized Coke and says yes.

Hermione spends most of their lunch ranting about someone in her class who is constantly “playing Devil’s advocate.” Today, it seems, he did this while talking about house elves, and Hermione went off on him so intensely the professor had to ask her to lower her voice. “‘We have to be civil and allow the expression of differing opinions in a college classroom,’” Hermione mimics furiously. “Even if those opinions are ‘we should keep slaves,’ apparently! Even if he’s obviously only doing it to get a rise out of people!” 

Among all the change his life has gone through in the past ten years, Harry feels rather comforted by Hermione being Hermione wherever and whenever she is. 

“What a dick,” says Harry. He means it, but this is also just enough agreement for Hermione to take a deep breath and get back into it, leaving Harry to pick at the rest of his burger and stay relatively silent beyond occasional noises of outrage and agreement. 

When their food is gone and Hermione has ranted herself out, the two of them sit in silence for a bit, gazing out the window and people watching. Harry is beginning to regret the American sized Coke; sure, he’s awake now, but he’s also incredibly jittery.

“Are you okay?” Hermione asks. “You’ve been a little off since Halloween.”

Harry sighs. His knee is bouncing under the table, and he can’t stop fiddling with the wrapper that held his burger. “I don’t think you want to hear about it,” he says, watching a man and woman walking by hand in hand and feeling the sting of bitterness. His therapist’s voice in his head reminds him he doesn’t know anything about them really, that they could be anyone or anything, but he quashes her voice grumpily. 

The worst part of the Malfoy business, aside from feeling bad for Malfoy, is remembering things Harry doesn’t like to remember, that on better days he knows aren’t true or worth it—bitter thoughts of never having a normal life or a family, fears of losing what he gained over the years, sharp pangs of self disgust and confusion in changing rooms, even things the Dursleys said once upon a time. 

He remembers getting distracted when Hermione was trying to teach him to swim properly, their first humid summer in Boston, after bumping into a shirtless man at a beach in Dorchester, their bare, sweaty skin connecting for a fleeting moment. He remembers feeling angry in a way extraordinarily out of proportion with what happened—going so far as to wonder if some part of Voldemort never left, if forever Harry would be someone angry, someone broken. 

“Don’t say that,” says Hermione. “Why wouldn’t I want to hear it?” 

“It’s about Malfoy,” says Harry. He is balling his straw wrapper up into the tiniest little ball he can manage, still looking out the window at passing students and tourists. 

“Oh,” says Hermione. When she pauses, Harry looks over to see her frowning. “Harry…” she says, “I just don’t think it’s productive to go on and on the way you do sometimes, but if something’s really bothering you—oh, I don’t want you to stop _telling_ me things.” 

“I saw him on Halloween,” Harry says. 

Hermione frowns. “Where did you see him?”

“The party.” 

“Ah.” Hermione only looks surprised for a brief second, her eyebrows shooting up and then settling in a way that could be funny, if Harry wasn’t in such a mood. “Well. What did he do?” 

Harry shrugs. “Nothing,” he says. “I mean, I guess not _nothing_, but he didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Hermione startles suddenly, as though surprised by a bug or a person bumping her, but there’s no one at the counter with them, and Harry doesn’t see any flies. Her eyes widen, and she says, “_Harry_.” 

“What?” Harry asks, alarmed. 

They stare at each other. 

“Oh, I—well—what happened, Harry?” 

“Like I said,” says Harry, baffled. “Not much. I just…I think I feel _bad_ for him.” He wrinkles his nose.

Hermione lets out a deep breath of what seems like relief, though Harry can’t imagine what she was expecting to hear. She lets out a little huff of a laugh. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just—you look so disgusted at the thought.” She must read the confusion in Harry’s face, because she adds, “At the thought of feeling something kind.”

“About _him_, yeah!” says Harry, a little stung by the implication he doesn’t like being kind in _general_. 

“I know, I know,” says Hermione. “I don’t love the thought of experiencing sympathy for Malfoy either.” 

“Ugh,” says Harry, unrolling the straw wrapper to roll it up again. It is beginning to disintegrate in his fingers. “He seemed…I think he’s having a hard time with it.” 

“With—?”

“With, you know…I think he’s gay. And I think it’s really hard on him.”

“Oh,” says Hermione. She frowns again. “Yes, I can’t imagine his parents would be thrilled…I suppose that ‘threatens the bloodline’ or some other racist rubbish. I hadn’t ever given much thought to that.” She gives him an apologetic look, like she often does when admitting homophobia was never particularly on her mind. Hermione seems to take it as a personal failure whenever she realizes some need for justice never occurred to her due to privilege, as if it is her job alone to fight oppression everywhere. Harry knows it’d be a bit rich of him to call her out on it. It is in this area that Ron gets his chance to be perpetually exasperated by his best friends. 

“No,” says Harry. He admits, “He said his father would kill him.”

Hermione winces.

“I don’t think he was exaggerating, either,” Harry says. 

“That’s awful,” says Hermione. 

Harry, not for the first time, thinks of his own parents. Every once in a while, he’s struck with a desperate need to know what they would have thought of him, if they would have loved him anyway. Would it have been hard for his father? Would his mother have cried about ‘not having grandchildren,’ like his ex’s mother did? He can’t imagine it, but he wonders, and he wishes so badly he could _know_. Andrew, his ex, thought he was lucky, not having to worry about being disowned. But Andrew was an idiot. Harry worried about the Weasleys, and now he’ll probably worry about his parents forever.

Hermione puts her hand on his. She doesn’t say anything, but Harry wouldn’t be surprised if she knew what he was thinking about.

“It’s unpleasant to realize people are people,” she offers wisely.

“I know his dad’s in Azkaban for life,” says Harry, “But imagine…knowing that.”

“I can’t,” says Hermione. “I can’t imagine what that would be like. But there’s a lot of things Malfoy can’t imagine about our lives, either, and he’s never been particularly good about them.” 

“I know,” says Harry. “But I can’t exactly…forget him saying that.”

“No,” says Hermione. “I know.” She squeezes his hand. “You’re going to hate me saying this,” she says. 

Harry sighs, looking up at the tile ceiling of the burger restaurant. “Great,” he says. 

“You don’t have to save everyone, Harry,” she says, “And you couldn’t if you tried.” 

“Ugh,” says Harry, dropping his forehead all the way to the counter and closing his eyes, but he does not wrench his hand away from her. 

“I know,” she says, her thumb rubbing comfortingly along the back of his hand. “But it’s not your job to save _Malfoy_ especially. He’ll be all right. And if he isn’t, it won’t be your fault. He has friends. He has people to worry about him.” 

Hermione’s right. 

But that doesn’t mean Harry stops thinking about it.

Even when a whole week goes by without any book requests from Malfoy, Harry doesn’t spend a day without thinking of him. It doesn’t go on and on all day—he has other things to do, he has a life—but always, eventually, he wonders how Malfoy is doing. He gets dangerously close to asking Cam if she’s seen him, but he manages to hold himself back when he remembers her laughter when she spotted them together at the party. 

He even talks to Gwen about him. He tells her he is worried about a human he doesn’t know very well. Her advice is to give him food. Considering the way Malfoy reacted about a drink, he doesn’t think this is the way to go.

Then, on November 9th, another request from Malfoy comes in. 

In addition to some DADA books with bland titles, he’s requested a novel—_You Don’t Know Me_.

Harry feels a strange combination of irritation and relief. He runs a finger along the line in the request book, thinks for a long moment, then checks it off and goes to search the catalogue. Just before the end of his shift, he places the Defense books and _You Don’t Know Me_ on the shelf with a book for people with learning disabilities—_I’m Not Stupid, Lazy, or Dumb_. 

Two days later, “100370—D. Malfoy” requests two more books—a mediocre magical mystery novel Harry’s actually read called _Fool Me Once_ and _Stranger in a Strange Land_ by Robert A. Heinlein. 

In response to this, Harry goes a little crazy.

It takes him the better part of the morning to fulfill the request, and of course—this is the time he’s still here when Malfoy arrives to pick up his books.

Malfoy’s eyes widen when he finds the enormous stack waiting for him on the holds shelf. Harry wants to hide under the desk, but at the same time, he has a hard time looking away. It doesn’t help that Malfoy’s wearing a denim jacket. It’s black, different from Joey’s, but almost certainly Joey’s influence. Harry’s not sure why this should make it harder to look away, and he’s not sure why it makes the back of his neck prickle with irritation, but here he is. 

The books he’s left for Malfoy are not messages—not in the titles, anyway. They’re books Harry has read or heard about from Cam, all wildly different except for one thing. _Maurice_, _The Charioteer_, _A Single Man_, _Annie On My Mind_, _Boy Meets Boy_—poems by Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg and Federico García Lorca, Emily Dickinson and Audre Lorde and Maureen Duffy—and wizard novels, too, books about an affair in the dorms of a fictionalized Hogwarts, an alley for gay wizards in New York City, lesbian romance in the time of witch burnings, and Harry’s favorite, the only romance novel he’s ever liked, a book in which an unhappy man is transported into an alternate universe in which he’s married to a man instead of a woman. 

Harry watches Malfoy’s eyebrows go on quite a journey as he thumbs through the books in the stack, eyes darting across the back covers and jacket flaps. He steps away from the shelf, looks around, steps back to the shelf, and repeats this a few times before swiftly grabbing the whole pile in one large armful and darting over to Harry at the desk. 

“I can’t take all these out,” Malfoy hisses.

“The limit’s thirty at once,” says Harry.

“No,” says Malfoy. “I mean _I_…_me_, I can’t.” 

“Oh,” says Harry. He furrows his brow. He should have thought of this. “Nobody sees your record but you and whoever checks you out,” he says, “And I can check you out right now. All records are deleted at the end of each semester—or whenever you ask.” 

Malfoy bites his lip. He fidgets back and forth, the enormous stack of books precarious in his arms. “Could you clear it right now?” he asks quietly. 

“I can clear it when you bring them back,” says Harry. “We just have to have the record of what you need to return. Or…” He fiddles with the pen he’s been using to mark off requests and doodle during his shift. “I can take them out. With my employee card.”

Malfoy plunks the books down onto the desk heavily. 

There’s a badge on the front pocket of his jacket. It says, “I Support the American Society for Werewolf Rights.” Harry never imagined he’d see Malfoy wearing a badge that said anything but “Potter Stinks,” especially not something in support of anyone who wasn’t a white pureblood wizard. 

“You’re going to take a bunch of books out for me?” Malfoy asks. 

“Sure,” says Harry. Malfoy’s face has gone very pink, and Harry begins to feel uneasy, though he can’t work out exactly why. This is a nice thing to do. It’s Malfoy, yeah, but—well, this has gone on this far. Malfoy’s not going to do anything _bad_ with these books, even if it does turn out he hasn’t changed a bit. It’s not going to hurt anything.

“Sure,” Harry repeats, and he fishes in his jeans pocket for his wallet, then spends some time rummaging around American muggle and wizarding money, a one pound coin, two sickles, receipts for groceries and coffees, various rewards cards, the key to his mailbox, Teddy Lupin’s latest primary school photo, and a Reese’s cup wrapper before he finds his library card. Malfoy watching incredulously does not help him find it any faster.

“Merlin,” says Malfoy, looking down his nose at Harry in such a condescending way that Harry feels, oddly, better. More normal.

“I’m doing a nice thing,” Harry reminds him, balling up the chocolate wrapper and tossing it over into the trash can next to the desk. 

“Show off,” says Malfoy. “Do a nice thing for yourself and organize your life.” 

“This is my wallet,” says Harry, “Not my life.” 

“I’ve found things like that are often representations of your life as a whole,” says Malfoy snootily, watching as Harry taps his card with the wand-like instrument they use to check out books. 

“Bully for you,” says Harry, starting the process of running the stick over the books. He’s gotten pretty fast at this part.

Malfoy keeps darting his eyes around as Harry scans the books, pulling his jacket closer to himself. 

“Almost everyone who works here is queer,” Harry says conversationally.

“Don’t _say_ that,” says Malfoy. 

Harry looks up. “They don’t care if I say so, they’re—”

“I mean don’t say…that word,” says Malfoy. 

Harry frowns, remembering now the way Malfoy winced at the Halloween party when Harry said “queer.” “Why not?”

“My Father says it,” Malfoy says shortly. “Or—he did.” 

“Okay,” says Harry, baffled. Sure, he remembers Uncle Vernon and Dudley saying it disparagingly, but…“I mean it, like—not in a bad way. People mean it positively here. It isn’t a—”

“I didn’t ask,” says Malfoy cooly.

They stare at each other.

“Well,” says Harry, at a loss but not particularly interested in a whole battle, “Nearly everybody who works at the library is—whatever.” He goes back to scanning the books. “Not straight.” 

Malfoy doesn’t answer. When Harry glances up from his scanning, Malfoy is gnawing on his bottom lip; he looks like he’s thinking hard but at a loss anyway. 

Harry slides the books over. “Don’t make me pay fines,” says Harry. “I work here, I can’t escape Julie.” 

Malfoy takes another look around the library, then begins shoving the books into his bag. The bag, Harry remembers, has a badge, too, but he hasn’t been able to read it until now—“I’m Still Learning—Michelangelo.” 

By the time Harry processes this and looks up, Malfoy is shutting the overstuffed bag and turning to bolt. He strides out of the library without a word, looking like he used to look at Hogwarts— back ramrod straight, nose turned up, and it occurs to Harry this is a way of defending himself before anyone can attack.

***

Malfoy doesn’t send in a request, as far as Harry knows, for another two weeks. But Harry does see him around, and this time, when he does, they _acknowledge_ each other. It’s weird, but it feels just as weird, if not weirder, to ignore each other.

They nod at each other on the street outside the library. They say hello at Harvard Books, Harry with a new mystery by a favorite author, Malfoy with _Leaves of Grass_, likely both hoping the other will not pay attention to what they’re buying. They run into each other at the pharmacy counter, Malfoy clutching the paper bag of medication tightly so as to make sure Harry cannot read it; Harry wonders if Malfoy, too, turned to muggle medication when wizards couldn’t properly help him with his mental health. 

As Thanksgiving approaches and Cam starts talking dreamily of stuffing and green bean casserole, Harry, Ron, and Hermione make their own plans for “English Thanksgiving”—for the past few years, they’ve use this break time to go home and visit family. They reckon if everyone else is doing it, they might as well. Molly always makes a big meal to welcome them, and their stories of home end up quite similar to the stories their American friends return with after break. 

“George ’n Lee say Mum’s going nuts,” Ron shares while they’re splitting their check at Zaftig’s one night. “Insisting everybody needs to be there. She said it was a ‘holiday.’ Percy was like, ‘It’s not a holiday!’ and she said, ‘Your brother coming home is a holiday.’” He signs the receipt for him and Hermione and adds, “I was right flattered but I guess Percy said ‘Ron’s here more than I am’ and she said, ‘I saw Ron last week, I’m talking about Harry.’” 

“Oh,” says Harry, touched. He knows he has a place with the Weasleys, but he’s not sure he’s ever been referred to as a ‘brother.’

Ron claps him on the back and nods approvingly at him, as though he has been asked for an assessment, then says, “She also asked again if you’re seeing anyone. She won’t fucking stop, I swear. Ginny said just because most people in our family get married in primary school doesn’t mean we all have to and there was another whole row about it.”

“Great,” says Harry.

“She won’t fight you on it,” says Ron.

“No, but she’ll almost certainly mention it,” says Hermione.

“I don’t mind taking the heat off Ginny and Charlie a few times a year,” Harry sighs.

“Good man,” says Ron, standing up and sliding his jacket on over a flannel that clashes horribly with his hair. “Anybody up for J.P. Licks?” 

“Oh, Ron, I’m stuffed,” says Hermione. “How are you like this? And it’s cold.” 

“It’s never too cold for ice cream,” Ron insists, and then Malfoy walks in the front door. 

“What?” says Hermione at the looks on Ron and Harry’s faces—for Ron, the look of someone who’s smelled something mildly unpleasant—for Harry, something like panic. He has not yet seen Malfoy with his friends around.

“I guess the wanker really is here, isn’t he?” says Ron. 

Hermione turns around. She is not subtle about it. “Oh,” she says. She turns back to them. “I saw him at Corey Hall the other day.”

“Do I look like that?” Ron asks sadly as Malfoy speaks to the hostess. 

Harry takes in the tight jeans on Malfoy’s long legs, the too-wide, too-short sweatshirt with a muggle sports logo on the front, the hair that’s growing out fast enough he has to push it out of his eyes already. 

“Like _Malfoy_?” Hermione says. She snorts. “No.”

“I know I’m not _ugly_,” says Ron, making Hermione laugh. “I just meant I’m tall like that. Half the time that’s what my clothes look like on me. I hope I don’t look like that.” 

“You’re not that skinny,” says Hermione. “And you have the sense to wear a jacket—well, now you do.” 

Harry doesn’t really understand why Ron always says Malfoy is ugly; he supposes it’s a straight man thing, pretending not to see anything attractive in men, or maybe people still feel they’re not supposed to admit someone as awful—formerly awful?—as Malfoy is good looking. 

Harry’s not going to make himself look stupid. He knows Malfoy is—well, he’s really fit, honestly, he has been since they were fifteen at least, but he can know that and still know it’s _Malfoy_. 

Malfoy turns and makes direct eye contact with him. 

He starts, and so does Harry. He doesn’t know what to do with Ron right next to him.

He settles, apparently, on the world’s most awkward smile.

Malfoy just blinks at him.

“They shouldn’t serve you, walkin’ in here like that,” a man heading to the door tells Malfoy. When Malfoy looks startled, the man laughs and says, “Your sweatshirt, man. Get that Yankees shit outta here.” 

“Oh,” says Malfoy. “This is my friend’s.” 

_My friend’s._ Is it Joey’s? Is Malfoy wearing Joey’s _clothes_? 

The man laughs loudly. “Your friend is trying to sabotage you, man, where you from?” 

“Wiltshire,” says Malfoy. “Er, England.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Here for school?”

“Yes.”

“I dunno if I’d trust that friend of yours, if they’re having you walk around Boston with Yankees shit on. Keep an eye on ‘em.” 

“Yes, sir,” says Malfoy, smiling, and the man seems to find this quite charming. 

“Pity he didn’t hit him,” Ron whispers as the man walks out the front door and the hostess returns with a paper to-go bag for Malfoy.

Hermione elbows him, but she laughs.

They’re going to have to walk right by him. 

Harry thinks the best thing to do to minimize awkwardness is just nod and walk by—so, naturally, he doesn’t do that. He opens his mouth and says, “Didn’t expect to see you over here.” 

Malfoy stiffens, but he doesn’t ignore Harry. “Joey lives here. I’m picking soup up for him. He always wants matzo ball soup after—I mean—when he isn’t well.” 

Harry wonders if Malfoy was entirely truthful when he said Joey is not his boyfriend—or if maybe he wants him to be. 

Joey seems nice enough. And even so, who cares if he’s not? Who cares if Malfoy has a nice boyfriend? Who cares if Malfoy is dating a sort of cute werewolf from New Jersey? But Harry feels a little put out at the thought, a little belligerent. Maybe it’s because he was just thinking of facing Molly’s questions during his visit. 

“Nice of you,” says Harry, as though it’s not, which doesn’t make sense, because he thinks it is. 

“Yes,” says Malfoy, raising an eyebrow.

“Haven’t seen you in the library in a bit,” says Harry. 

Malfoy looks incredulous, probably because the conversation does not have to go on _and yet it is_, and Harry is making it happen. Harry can _feel_ Ron and Hermione staring at the back of his head. 

“Yes, well,” says Malfoy, fidgeting and adjusting the takeaway bag in his arms. “I got a lot of books last time, you might remember.” 

“Yeah,” says Harry. “You did.” 

“I like Walt Whitman,” Malfoy offers, staring at the bag instead of Harry, and he looks almost…shy.

“I don’t really get poetry,” Harry admits. “But Cam likes it. Told me about some.” 

Malfoy nods. He clears his throat. “Well.” He takes a deep breath and looks at Ron and Hermione. “Hello,” he says. “This isn’t the time or the place, but I imagine we have some things to say to each other.” 

“Do we?” says Hermione.

Malfoy’s shoulder tense. “Well,” he says. “I have things I’d like to say to you, if you are ever amenable to them, and if you are not, I respect that. Have a lovely night.” 

He hurries out of Zaftig’s. 

“Wow,” says Ron when he, Hermione, and Harry exit to the sidewalk. Malfoy, it seems, has already disappeared. “I thought I was just taking the piss.”

“What?” says Harry as they start towards Ron and Hermione’s flat, J.P. Licks apparently forgotten. The sidewalk is filled with people pushing prams, talking on mobile phones, and walking dogs, nobody paying much attention to where anybody else is standing. 

“Standing around flirting with Malfoy…” Ron shakes his head. “No decency, mate.” 

“Ron,” Hermione says sharply.

“He knows it’s not because he’s _gay_, Merlin,” says Ron.

“He’s not gay,” says Hermione. “He’s bisexual.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, words mean things, Ron.”

“You really don’t have to talk about me like this in front of me,” says Harry. 

Hermione sighs. “I’m sorry, Harry. I won’t lie, though, I’m not particularly excited about this Malfoy thing…has he got a boyfriend?”

“He said he didn’t,” says Harry, instantly regretting it. 

“You _asked_?” says Ron.

“Hang on, hang on,” Harry says, dodging a group of chattering girls in Harvard sweatshirts taking up most of the sidewalk. “I was not _flirting_ with him, first of all, now or ever. I asked when we were having a conversation at the party, because he talked about Joey a lot, that’s _all_.” One of the Harvard girls seems to have overheard this; as she and her friends walk off, she giggles and begins whispering to them.

“Harry,” says Hermione. “I love you dearly. But you were talking about Walt Whitman.”

“I don’t—I—he got a Walt Whitman book out of the library!”

“I don’t know who Walt Whitman is,” says Ron, “But I liked the part where you said—” He puts on an incredibly exaggerated ‘manly’ voice, a bit like the leather jacket sporting bad boy in that stupid old musical film Hermione pretends she doesn’t like, “Haven’t seen you at the library in a bit.”

“I did not sound like that,” Harry grumbles. “Next time I won’t be nice to someone who’s having a hard time. I’m just going to stop trying to be a better person then, if that’s better.” 

Hermione snorts. Harry knows he sounds like he’s fifteen, but he’s feeling too grumpy to stop himself. 

“Is he having a hard time?” says Ron. 

“I’m not going to tell everyone all of his business,” says Harry.

“I just didn’t realize you were having, like, heart to hearts,” Ron says as they round the corner to their street. 

“I don’t fancy Malfoy!” says Harry. 

Ron and Hermione exchange a look. Harry hates when they do this—when they look at each other like they _are_ his parents, like they know better than him, but they’re not going to tell him yet. He chafes at the pity of it, at the condescension of it. 

“I’m going home,” says Harry, setting off down their street to where he’s parked Sirius’ bike. 

“Oh, don’t be like that,” says Ron. 

“Ron’s being an idiot, Harry!” Hermione calls after him. 

“Oh, thanks,” says Ron.

“I think you’re being a good person,” Hermione continues. 

“I’ll see you at Thanksgiving,” says Harry. 

He probably roars off a bit too fast. He also doesn’t put his helmet on, and Hermione’s sure to corner him about it next time he sees her. 

When he gets to a red light in front of Hermione’s usual CVS and is forced to sit for a minute, he is also forced to consider that he _may_ have overreacted. 

As he sits there, Malfoy exits the CVS. Merlin, is he just fucking everywhere? He’s still holding the bag from Zaftig’s, and as he walks out, he’s sticking an enormous bottle of ibuprofen in it. They make eye contact—again—and Malfoy, despite having seen Harry minutes ago, takes in the whole picture, his eyes flicking over Harry and the bike, and looks like he’s going to go into cardiac arrest. 

Harry waves. 

Malfoy keeps on staring. 

The light changes and Harry speeds off, wishing everyone wasn’t being so fucking _weird_.

The next day at work, the first request in the book when Harry arrives says, “100370—D. Malfoy—_Men Who Love Dragons Too Much_.” 

“I thought I’d leave that one for you,” says Cam. 

For a moment, Harry panics, wondering if Malfoy overheard what Ron and Hermione were saying to him—but he concludes this is impossible. Malfoy’s making fun of him for talking so much at Zaftig’s. He has to be.

“Why did you leave it for me?” Harry asks.

“Last time I tried to take a request from Draco I thought you’d rip the book right out of my hands,” says Cam. “Plus I was here when he picked up some of the books you left him, and I know you added something. Who am I to get in the way of whatever the fuck you’re doing? It’s kind of cute.” 

“It’s not _cute_,” says Harry, but he does have to admit that it isn’t actually antagonistic, either. Not anymore. It might have started off that way, but then…well…the thing is, Harry’s too old to be so serious about this. He isn’t fourteen and furious about _Potter Stinks_ badges, or fifteen and furious about _Weasley Is Our King_. At this point, what they’re doing is just…

Silly.

It takes Harry a while to find something good. Eventually, he settles on “No Thank You, Mr. President;” he doesn’t particularly want to call Malfoy “Mr. President,” but the “no thank you” is good enough. 

As he and Cam are getting ready to leave, Rosa and another clerk taking their places, she asks him, “What exactly _are_ you doing with the books? Sending messages?” She is already wearing her coat; while Harry sometimes finds Boston a bit too warm or humid this time of year, Cam is always cold. 

“Yes,” says Harry, pulling a hoodie over his head. 

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, twisting her keys around her finger. “But, like…why?” 

Harry tries to remember why. 

“He started it,” he says finally. 

“Always a sign of a mature situation,” says Cam. “Oh my god, has this been since the invisibility book?”

“Sort of,” says Harry.

“Wow. I guess I admire your dedication.” 

“Thanks,” says Harry. “I’m very dedicated to what I do.” 

As they walk out of the building, readying to part so Harry can head over to his bike and Cam can head to the T, Cam says, “You okay, Harry?” 

“Yeah,” says Harry. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Cam sighs. “Just know I’m here if you need anything,” she says. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Harry says. Cam gives him a hug goodbye and leaves for the T station. Harry watches her until she’s gone and wonders if he really is okay. 

Malfoy’s response comes in faster than it ever has—it’s there when Harry arrives the next morning: _Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_. Harry can think of nothing to do but say it back, so he gives him _Lies and Ugliness_ in response. 

When Malfoy turns up this time, Harry’s in the last half hour of his shift. To Harry’s surprise, Malfoy walks right up to him at the desk and says, “Losing your touch?” 

“What do you mean?” Harry asks, looking up from doodling an owl on a post-it note. 

Malfoy brandishes the lying books. “You just copied mine.” 

“It was the only thing to say,” says Harry. “It’s you who’s lying.”

Malfoy laughs—a real, normal person laugh. A friendly laugh. It is perhaps this laugh that makes Harry lose his head and ask, “I get off in ten minutes, do you want to get lunch?”

“Get lunch?” Malfoy repeats, startled. 

“Yeah,” Harry says. Inwardly, he’s dying, wondering why the fuck he asked, but he doesn’t want Malfoy to know that. “People need to eat…sometimes it’s a social activity…do you have class or something?”

“I…” Malfoy looks around as if expecting someone with more sense to appear and tell them both to fuck off and get back to normal. “No,” he says. “No, I don’t have class.” 

“Then let’s get lunch.”

“Okay,” says Malfoy. “Yeah. All right.” 

They get burgers the same place Harry goes with Hermione from time to time. Malfoy orders chips with cheese on them and eats them with his fingers, and it’s one of the weirdest things Harry’s ever seen. 

It’s like Malfoy’s _normal_.

He’s wearing his denim jacket again, and there’s two new badges on it—a relatively innocuous _Student Curse Breaking Association_, and another that startles Harry completely: _Fuck Pure Blood_. 

Malfoy catches Harry staring. “Joey gave it to me,” he says uneasily. “I’m not sure about it.”

Harry doesn’t like the sound of that. He feels his hackles raising. “Oh?” he says. “Not sure yet if you want to step out of that cozy privilege bubble, then?” 

Malfoy scowls. “No,” he says. “Not sure if _I_ should wear it, Potter.” 

“What’s the difference?”

Malfoy sighs. He touches the badge self consciously and says, “I don’t know if you know this, but I lived with muggles for five years.” 

“Oh, well that means you can’t possibly be racist,” Harry says, rolling his eyes.

“That’s not what I _mean_,” says Malfoy. “I mean I spent a long time having a series of very rude awakenings.” 

“Am I meant to feel bad for you?” 

“Why did you ask me to do this if this is how you’re going to talk to me?” 

“Why would you assume I’d talk to you any other way about this?”

Malfoy glares at him, then at his chips. He picks up a plastic fork and jams it hard into a cheesier corner of the chips’ paper tray. “Whatever,” he says. “I meant—muggles are people.”

“Wow,” says Harry, voice still loaded with sarcasm. 

“It turns _out_,” says Malfoy, still stabbing at his chips, “That muggles are people, they’re just different from us, and that’s not wrong, and you can even…” He swallows. “You can even feel…you have can have feelings for them.”

“Well done, realizing people who are different to you are people by age twenty-five.” 

Malfoy huffs in frustration. “I am well aware of how pathetic it is,” he says sharply. “I’m not a good person, Potter, and I don’t think I am. You don’t have to disabuse me of the notion. Save your breath.” 

Harry doesn’t really know what to say to that. 

“When it comes to the badge’s message,” he says, “That is, in fact, a sentiment I feel at this point in my life. That’s why Joey gave it to me in the first place. I don’t like who that concept made my family. I don’t like who it made me. I don’t like what it’s doing to me now. I’m working on it. Can we talk about something else?” 

Harry still feels wary, but people have started to look at them. “Okay,” he says, picking up his burger again. 

Malfoy looks around the restaurant, notes the eyes still lingering on them, and lowers his voice. “Can you tell me about…” He fiddles with the fork he’s been using for the last of his cheese drenched chips. “…your boyfriend?” 

“My boyfriend?” says Harry, blinking. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“No,” says Malfoy, his cheeks flushing. “I mean—you said you had a boyfriend. Once.”

“Oh,” says Harry. “Yeah, I mean, he’s kind of a tosser.” 

Malfoy laughs. 

“Thought you’d like to hear about my mistakes,” says Harry. 

“Of course.”

“He wasn’t good for me. Do you want to know about _him_, or do you want to know about, like…how I met him?”

“Tell me how you got there,” Malfoy says, still bright pink, focusing hard on his chips.

So Harry tells him how he got there, more or less. He talks about meeting Andrew at a bar. He talks about the way it clicked, the way it was different and the same as dating Ginny. He talks about the way his friends and family reacted. He probably says more than he should. 

As they talk, Malfoy opens up a bit more, as well—he doesn’t talk about the gay thing, really, but he talks about Joey. He talks about school. He talks about the muggles he worked and lived with up North—the television and films they watched together, the museums they visited, the books he read at their recommendation. He talks about discovering jeans and Coke and highlighters, CDs and cinemas and massive supermarkets. He blushes whenever he mentions someone called Will. 

By the time they’re done eating, neither of them have anywhere else to be, and they’ve just really warmed to the conversation, so Harry says, “D’you want to go somewhere else? I’ve got my bike.”

Malfoy stiffens. “Your bike?”

“Yeah,” says Harry. “You could hop on the back if you wanted.”

Malfoy’s eyes go wide. He looks like he’s going to start choking. 

“Or not,” says Harry. He remembers Malfoy gripping tightly to his back on his broom, that day in the Room of Requirement. It feels weird, remembering it. “Hermione won’t get on the thing, she doesn’t like it. She’s literally ridden a dragon, but she can’t deal with the bike.” 

“Mm,” says Malfoy. “I—no, maybe I ought to—go.” 

“We don’t have to take the bike,” says Harry. “We _can_ apparate. I just hate doing it.” 

“No, that’s—that’s okay, I really should be going,” Malfoy says faintly, “I’ll see you around, Potter,” and he practically runs in the opposite direction.

Harry doesn’t know which feels odder—the hasty exit, or how normal the rest of all that was. 

The following morning, Harry finds Malfoy requested two books shortly after they parted: _Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Household Pests_ and _Bug Off! 2,193 Secrets for Battling Bad Bugs, Outfoxing Crafty Critters, Evicting Voracious Varmints, and Much More!_

Harry doesn’t really think much of putting them on the holds shelf with a young adult book in a series called _Gossip Girl_—_You Know You Love Me_. 

It doesn’t occur to him until he’s home and settling in with Gwen to continue reading his latest mystery—it isn’t holding his attention as much as he’d have liked, as he’s fairly certain he’s already figured out the mother is the murderer—that maybe this was a weird book to leave for Malfoy.

No, it isn’t weird. It shouldn’t be weird. It’s a joke, and Malfoy will know that. It’s their friends who don’t know queer, or whatever, men who like men can…send each other messages through library book titles…without fancying one another.

“_Gwen_,” says Harry, “_I don’t think I’m being strange. Am I the one who’s being strange_?”

“_Harry comes home, takes layers off, and reads book_,” says Gwen. “_This is not strange_.”

“_Exactly_,” says Harry. “I am not strange.” 

_All humans are strange to me_,” says Gwen. _Habits are different._

“_Fair_,” says Harry.

“_Has other strange human fed you yet_?” asks Gwen. 

Harry is about to say “no” when he remembers they did, in fact, eat together today. Does that count? “_Not exactly_,” he says. 

“_Perhaps you need to feed it_,” she says. 

“_We did eat together_,” he says.

“_Eating together_,” says Gwen, “_More sacred than feeding_.” 

The snake concept of “sacred” is not quite the same as the human one, but it’s the closest translation, and it’s still quite serious. “_I think humans are different_,” Harry says.

“_Creatures not so different with food_,” says Gwen. 

When Harry goes to bed that night, he thinks he’s sure to feel better when Malfoy’s response comes in. It will be normal. It will be funny. Harry only feels this weird because Ron and Hermione and Cam and Joey have made it weird, because they can’t mind their own business. (And Harry, of course, has always minded his own business.) And Gwen is a snake. What does she know about humans and their food habits? 

Malfoy’s response is already in when Harry gets to work. 

It doesn’t make him feel better. 

Malfoy asks for _History’s Worst Decisions_ and _I Love How You Love Me_. 

Harry sees the requests right before the library closes for Thanksgiving break. He feels like he did the time he drank too much coffee and had heart palpitations and Hermione made him go to the campus healer even though he isn’t a student. 

He should not have picked a book that said “love” in the title. 

It’s a joke, he thinks. It’s a joke, just like his response was a joke.

But they haven’t admitted to the possibility of _liking_ each other before. Liking each other like friends, not like…

They’re not _flirting_. Are they? 

Harry doesn’t _know_ Malfoy, not really. Does he? 

By the time Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave for “Thanksgiving,” Harry has worked himself into a panic. 

He’s not flirting with Malfoy. He thinks of bringing Malfoy a drink at the party and taking out all those books for him and the way he said, “I like Walt Whitman,” quiet and shy. The way he said “oral fixation” and blew smoke out of his mouth. _I Love How You Love Me_. 

_History’s Worst Decisions_.

God, it’s _Malfoy_!

Harry hopes he’ll be distracted by his visit home, but the whole time the knowledge of the unfilled holds jitter under his skin. 

When they visit Wheezes on Friday, Harry sneaks off to buy a copy of _Leaves of Grass_, and he excuses himself for an hour with jetlag as an excuse to look through it. It’s hard—he still doesn’t really _get_ poetry, but sometimes he finds words that make him understand Malfoy clutching the collection in Harvard Books though he, as far as Harry knows, still has a library copy: 

“For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,/In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,/And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and I was happy.” 

“This moment yearning and thoughtful sitting alone,/it seems to me there are other men in other lands yearning and thoughtful…And it seems to me if I could know those men/I should become attached to them as I do to men in my own lands,/O I know we should be brethren and lovers,/I know I should be happy with them.” 

Harry realizes he’s sitting around the Burrow reading old _poetry_ because of _Draco Malfoy_, shoves the book deep into his suitcase, and goes downstairs to spend time with his family. 

“Everyone” does show up to Molly’s dinner on Saturday, just as she demanded: all the Weasleys, even Charlie, including spouses Fleur, Penelope, and Lee and their little children; the Grangers; Andromeda and Teddy; even Neville, Luna, Dean, and Seamus, courtesy of Ron’s invitation. They play a pick up game of Quidditch, reminisce loudly about dormitory antics, listen to Teddy’s info dumps about dragons (he has been following Charlie around nonstop), indulge Molly as she beams around at all of them like she’s never been so happy, and eat too much. It’s lovely, but it’s a lot for Harry, who is no longer as used to big crowds—even if he is trying very hard to run away from something brewing in the back of his brain, and all the noise is a good distraction. 

Some time between dinner and dessert, Harry allows himself a moment to inch outside into the November chill. He leans against the Burrow and looks up at the clear sky, another thing he rarely sees in Boston, and breathes. 

_In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me…_ Harry remembers, and he allows himself a tiny snort of disgust—at himself, at poetry, at feelings.

“All right?”

Harry jumps. 

It’s Ginny, he knows this right away, but Molly has been hugging Harry and Hermione both so much that Harry’s begun to feel a bit jumpy turning corners, and his body goes into defense mode. 

Ginny laughs at him. Harry doesn’t feel angry about it. They may not have lasted, dating, but he knows her. He knows who she is and what she means when she says it. He misses her all the time—as a friend—but he knows that even if he stayed in England, she wouldn’t be around a lot. She’s always traveling for Quidditch.

“Ron said you’ve been a little off,” says Ginny. “And also that you were flirting with Malfoy.”

“Ron says a lot of things,” Harry says darkly.

“He does do that,” says Ginny. 

“I don’t know,” says Harry.

“You don’t know what?”

Harry groans and leans hard against the wall again, looking up at the moon. “I don’t _know_ if I’m flirting with Malfoy.” 

“Oh wow,” says Ginny. “I really thought Ron was taking the piss.” 

“Me, too,” says Harry.

Ginny reaches a hand up and squeezes his shoulder. “What made you change your mind?”

“I don’t know if I’ve changed my mind,” Harry says petulantly.

“Okay,” Ginny says, rolling her eyes. “What made you not know if you’ve changed your mind?” 

“A book he gave me,” says Harry.

“He gave you a book?”

“Well—not exactly.” 

Harry explains the entire thing to Ginny, and as he does, he begins to realize, even more than before, how stupid it is. It is not easy to justify yourself while explaining to someone that you have been communicating with your schoolboy nemesis through pointed library book titles. 

Helpfully, Ginny responds to the entire story by saying, “This is stupid.”

“Thanks,” says Harry.

“Do men know they can talk to each other? Do you know about that, communication?” 

“I don’t know, you dated me, you tell me,” says Harry. 

Ginny bumps her shoulder against his. “You’re definitely better than you were at eighteen.” 

“Silver lining,” says Harry dryly.

“Imagine, you could be sixteen, even.” 

“I’d rather not imagine it.”

“Me, neither.” 

“I don’t think he’s very happy he’s gay,” says Harry. “I don’t know if he’s ready to…” To what, Harry doesn’t know. He hates that these words have left his mouth. “Anyway. It isn’t that, it’s…”

“It’s Malfoy,” says Ginny.

“Yeah,” says Harry. “It’s _Malfoy_. I mean, I’ve always known he’s hot, I’m not stupid, but I just thought, you know, it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because everything else about him is awful, and now suddenly—_what_?”

Ginny, like her brother before her, is losing it laughing. 

“What’s so funny?” Harry demands. “I’m having a crisis here, you know!”

“Did you just say you’ve always known he’s _hot_?”

“Oh, fuck you,” says Harry. “Am I not allowed to—”

“_No_, I just—what a way to talk about Malfoy!” Ginny dissolves into laughter again.

“What do you mean?” Harry asks.

“I mean, to each his own and all that, but ugh, Harry.” 

“What?” Harry says desperately. “I mean—I can see him! I know we never liked him, but I thought, you know, maybe at this point we could get past that part and be honest!”

“Holy shit,” says Ginny. “I _am_ being honest! You’re just…I can’t believe this. You’ve been going round randy for Malfoy all this time, imagining everyone just—”

“If you say ‘randy for Malfoy’ again I will die,” says Harry. 

“Malfoy’s so weird looking, Harry! He’s probably got webbed feet!” 

“Stop! No! I don’t believe you. Your taste isn’t everybody else’s, Ginny!” 

“Neither is yours, I can promise you that.” 

“Stop acting like this is mad! I have eyes!” 

“Shall we go take a poll?”

“Ginny, do _not_ ask anyone this question.”

“Can I least ask Ron and Hermione? Please? Please? Harry, you didn’t even say he was, like, all right, or attractive, you said he was _hot_.” 

“Shut _up_,” says Harry, and something in his voice seems to sober Ginny a little.

After a pause, she says, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Harry says shortly.

“But Harry, if you’ve been sitting around thinking Malfoy’s ‘hot’—” She appears to be putting in a great effort not to start laughing again. “—I think you might fancy him a _bit_, if anything. It’s not exactly the most shocking thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve read romance novels.”

“I hate this,” says Harry. “Why did he request those books?”

“_Ask him_,” says Ginny. “Just ask him, Harry. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“That I’ve somehow managed to fall for stupid Malfoy and he’s actually awful still, but I’m thinking with my dick and about how I want to save everyone, and he doesn’t even give a shit anyway because he’s probably got a werewolf boyfriend!” 

Breathing heavily, Harry slams himself back against the wall and crosses his arms. He watches his breath huff out of him in the cold. He wants to go throw out _Leaves of Grass_ and then wander off to live with the garden gnomes. 

“Oh, Harry,” says Ginny. She sounds like Hermione. 

“Don’t.”

“Okay.” 

Ginny takes his hand and squeezes it. He lets her. 

“Has he really got a boyfriend?” Ginny asks.

Harry shrugs, too violently, feeling fifteen again. Malfoy turns him into a child. This can’t be a good thing. “He said he wasn’t his boyfriend, but…” 

“I’m going to say it one more time,” says Ginny. She lets go of Harry’s hand and reaches up to hold his face firmly in her hands. “Use your _words_, Harry.” She shakes his head a little. “Your mouth words, not your book title words. Gryffindor up. You’ve done a lot scarier than this.” 

“Ugh,” says Harry. 

Not long after this, Teddy is sent out to fetch them for dessert. He tells them all about differentiations in Chinese Fireball coats while they scoop tarts, pies, and biscuits onto their plates, and then he goes off to find Victoire, no doubt to tell her the exact same information.

Ginny betrays Harry the moment they’re gathered round with their friends. “So, I was just wondering,” she says. “If you had to pick one from each house, who do you think were the fittest people in our years?” 

Hermione narrows her eyes at Ginny, but everyone else doesn’t notice anything nefarious. 

Harry desperately hopes someone is going to say Malfoy. Please, he thinks, all of you, say Malfoy. 

Nobody says Malfoy.

When it comes to Slytherin, it’s Blaise Zabini across the board, except for Ron, Neville, and Luna, who go for the Greengrasses. Nobody seems to notice Harry doesn’t answer, which is good, because he is slowly feeling his face and neck get hotter and hotter.

“No votes for Malfoy?” Ginny says innocently. 

“Oi,” says Ron, and for a moment Harry thinks he’s being defended—then Ron says, “I’m eating!” 

“Oh, well he is handsome,” says Luna.

“You don’t like men, Luna,” says Ginny.

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I wouldn’t say handsome.” 

“Looks like one of those muppets,” says Seamus.

“One of those _what_?” says Harry.

“Muggle thing, Dean showed me,” says Seamus. “They’re puppets.”

“He doesn’t look like a _puppet_,” says Harry, and then he realizes he needs to back off before someone _does_ notice he didn’t actually answer the question. 

Dean grabs a napkin, takes a pen from his pocket, and begins to draw an example of a muppet. 

“It’s actually not too far off,” says Hermione wearily. 

‘I hate you,’ Harry mouths at Ginny across the table as everyone exclaims over Dean’s likeness of a muppet and whether or not Malfoy’s looks are similar. 

She smiles sweetly at him.

***

When Harry returns to America, he doesn’t have a shift at the library for a couple days, so he holes up in his flat. He grocery shops. He waters his plants. He chats to Gwen. He reads mysteries. He tries not to think of Malfoy.

It doesn’t work. 

He wonders what Malfoy did over the holiday. He wonders if Malfoy’s anxious about the books he requested. He wonders if Malfoy really _meant_ to…imply something to Harry. He wonders, still, if he really wants him to have meant it.

Harry’s talked to Gwen and Ginny and Hermione and Ron, and now Harry doesn’t know who else to talk to. He wants to owl Cam, she said she was here for him, but he’s worried she’s too close to Malfoy now…and he’s embarrassed, talking to someone who knows Malfoy _now_. The only thing worse would be talking to Joey. He takes out an old, empty diary Hermione got him once, writes, “I don’t know if I want him to have meant it,” gets too embarrassed, and vanishes the entire thing.

He reads _Leaves of Grass_. He reads, “To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what/you suppose;/Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it is so easy to have me become your lover?” He reads, “Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let/go your hand from my shoulders,/Put me down and depart on your way.” 

He doesn’t even like these poems.

When he gets to work on Wednesday, the last day of November, someone else has filled Malfoy’s holds. Fine. Good. It means he won’t do anything stupid.

“Harry,” Cam says gently, the fifth time Harry makes a minor mistake and swears under his breath, “Are you okay?” 

He’s tired of people asking him this.

“No,” he snaps. “Okay? I’m not.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Cam asks, and Harry immediately feels bad for snapping. 

He sits down in the desk chair next to her and deflates. He makes a kind of unintelligible mumbling sound—even he isn’t sure what he means to say. 

“Did something happen over the vacation?” Cam asks.

Harry doesn’t have the energy to dance around it anymore. “Does Malfoy talk about me?” he asks. 

Okay, he wishes he’d asked it a little differently, but here they are.

Cam sighs, a very tiny sigh, and somehow Harry does not feel condescended to. She settles further into her own chair like she’s expecting a long conversation. “Yes,” she says, turning the chair to face him. “A lot.” 

Harry’s not sure what to ask, what to say, next. Everything that enters his brain seems too embarrassingly specific.

“Joey teases him all the time,” says Cam, “Because he talks about you so much. If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, I don’t know the answer. But I also don’t think you’d be stupid if you asked him yourself.” 

Harry folds his arms on the desk and rests his head on his arms, closing his eyes. The library’s too bright. His glasses dig into his skin, so he takes them off and gets right back into position. He listens to the shuffling of footsteps, the soft turning of pages, the thumps of heavy books and bags as they’re set down on tables. 

Cam pats his arm. 

“I’m confused,” Harry mumbles into his arms, almost wishing she won’t hear him.

“That’s okay,” says Cam. 

Harry adjusts his head, peaks out at her with one eye. She is blurry under the fluorescent lighting. “What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s okay to be confused,” says Cam. “I mean it’s like that sometimes.”

It doesn’t answer anything, but somehow it helps all the same.

Harry spends most of his shift on edge, waiting for a request or, Merlin forbid, an appearance from Malfoy. When a request comes toward the end of his shift, Harry nearly topples right out of his seat. 

“Student 100370—D. Malfoy. _Things I Didn’t Know I Loved_.” 

Harry’s heart seizes in his chest.

If he still didn’t know how he felt, he knows now. 

It’s like he feels it hitting him, like a trap door opens up inside of him and everything he feels drops even further, even deeper, than it was before, deeper than he thought it all could go. It’s like the wind gets knocked out of him. It’s like “In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me.” 

Harry doesn’t find another book to go with it. In the end he’s shit at words. He’s too impatient to search the catalogue for the right ones. 

Harry’s shift ends and Malfoy hasn’t shown up yet, but Harry stays in the library. He stays in the lobby, pretending to read, pretending to think about anything but lying in wait for Draco Malfoy because of a book of poems.

Harry’s so busy pretending to not be waiting for Malfoy that he almost does miss him. But before Malfoy gets to the stairs, Harry looks up, and Harry sees him, and Harry calls out, “Malfoy!” 

Malfoy jumps and looks over. Some studying students glare at Harry, and Julie frowns at him from the front desk. Harry doesn’t bother with so much as an apologetic glance at any of them. He just strides over to Malfoy and says, “Can we talk?”

He might be standing too close to him. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s…okay. 

Malfoy looks from Harry to the stairs. “I—yes,” says Malfoy, “Of course—are you all right?” 

“Yeah,” Harry says reassuringly. He wants to reach out, to touch Malfoy’s arm, to close his hand around Malfoy’s bony wrist, exposed as his jacket rides up, but he doesn’t. He can’t, not yet. “Yeah, just—can we, can we sit—or go outside—or something? 

“Yes,” says Malfoy. He looks alarmed, and Harry wants to tell him it’s fine, it’s okay, but he doesn’t want to tell him standing in the middle of the lobby like this. “Is it urgent? Do you mind if I pick up a book first?”

“I didn’t put anything with it,” Harry says dismissively. 

Malfoy blinks. “What?” he says. “Oh—you didn’t answer last time, so I just asked for a book for class.” 

The dropping Harry feels in his stomach this time is far less pleasant.

“A book for class?” he repeats.

“Yes,” says Malfoy. One corner of his lips quirks up. “Turns out I’m a student here.”

Harry is so _stupid_. 

He’s never been more sure of it in his life. 

“Oh,” he says, and his voice seems to be coming from very far off. 

“I’ll just go fetch it and we can talk,” says Malfoy. Suddenly shy, he says, “Did you want to—we could get coffee? If you wanted?” 

“That’s okay,” Harry says. His voice doesn’t even sound like his voice. “You know what, never mind. It’s not important.”

Malfoy furrows his brow. “Are you sure? I don’t have anything to do after—”

“It’s fine, Malfoy!” Malfoy stares at him. “It’s not important. Go get your stupid book, okay, I just…” Malfoy’s looking more and more baffled, so Harry just stops talking. Whatever excuse he was about to try isn’t going to work. He knows this.

To Harry’s horror, Malfoy’s eyes grow wide, and his face goes even paler than normal, as if suddenly he’s remembered the title of his book. 

Harry has to leave immediately. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Harry says, stupidly, “It’s nothing,” and he turns on his heel and bolts out of the library like the absolute moron he is.

***

Harry is not sure he’s ever been more mortified in his life, and that’s saying something.

He knows he should go to therapy now more than ever, but the thought of describing to someone what he’s done so immediately afterward is awful, so he cancels. He calls out of work sick on Friday, too. And he won’t talk to his friends either, because all they’ve done is _tease_ him, and he doesn’t think he can take that right now. 

Distantly, a voice tells him he’s being dramatic, that this is nothing compared to facing the public after the things Rita Skeeter has written about him, that it’s nothing compared to anything he did when he was seventeen. 

But it doesn’t stop him. 

He’s not sure when he went from “I’m confused” to “quite heartbroken, somehow,” but…he’s so stupid with his feelings. They come on so quickly and so intensely, and then they won’t just _leave_ like that. They just stay. 

He can’t sleep Friday night, and when he does wake up on Saturday, it’s to a very anxious ball python cowering in the corner of her terrarium and an irate barn owl tapping so furiously at his bedroom window it’s left a crack. 

Harry looks at it blearily for a moment before registering the damage and scrambling out of bed. The moment he opens the window, she swoops in and cuffs him in the head with her wing, drops a letter on his bed, and dive-bombs him again for good measure. 

“Hey!” Harry shouts, throwing his arms up, and the bird pecks him hard on the arm before zipping out the still-open window into the cold December air. “What the _fuck_,” Harry grumbles, stumbling back over to slam the window shut. It’s freezing out, the first truly freezing morning he’s felt this year. Or—he looks at the clock on his bedside table. The first truly freezing day. It’s 3 PM. He wonders how long the owl waited for him. 

He grabs the stupid letter and rips it open. 

It reads: 

_Draco finally described the whole book thing to me and I’m gonna need you to actually talk. But he’s not gonna talk to you so I’m taking this upon myself. If you don’t like him stop leading him on. Just say something to him. I don’t really want to kick your ass I mean I do spiritually but I don’t know if I can really do that especially because transing kicked my ass last month broke my fucking wrist so it’s weak. But I will try my best and I have other friends. So get it together because he’s fucked up about this. He’s just a new baby gay give him a break!!!_

_Joey_

It takes Harry three reads to feel fairly confident he’s deciphered the handwriting. He’s no grammar expert, but he doesn’t think the lack of punctuation helps. 

As he murmurs gently to Gwen, coaxing her out from her terrified ball, he thinks about the most baffling part of the letter: “If you don’t like him stop leading him on.” Leading him _on_? Malfoy’s the one who set up an entire precedent of sending Harry messages through books and then asked for fucking _Things I Didn’t Know I Loved_, and then took it _back_. Harry hasn’t done _anything_.

He looks at the end of the letter again. _He’s fucked up about this._

Gwen’s finally calmed down and Harry’s still puzzling when another owl turns up, this time familiar: it’s Cam’s great horned owl, Orrin. 

On a piece of official library stationary, Cam’s written, “Got a request in just now and I’m wondering if it’s pointed. Did you do something??? Are you okay?” After that she’s copied out, “Student 100019 J. Schwartz—It’s Your Fault You’re Single: Why You Are Your Own Worst Enemy In Love.” 

“Fucking…Orrin, wait here.” Harry rummages through his crowded desk—it operates more as storage than anything else—for any writing utensils he can find, eventually unearthing a chewed pen and a notepad with little cartoon snakes on it. He writes, “Can you tell me what the fuck you’re on about?????” and asks Orrin to bring it to Joey.

It doesn’t take long to receive a response. Underneath Harry’s note, Joey has written, “????? Are you stupid?” 

Harry groans in frustration, feeling awful when Gwen balls up again in the corner, the poor thing. “_I’m sorry, Gwen_,” says Harry. “_I’m only frustrated, it’s okay_.”

“_I do not like the feeling of the air_,” says Gwen.

“_I don’t either_,” Harry admits. “_I’m trying to do something about it—I think_.” He writes, again underneath Joey’s note, “Yes!!! Probably!!! What are you talking about? Did Malfoy say I’m leading him on?” 

It takes a whole hour for the next note to arrive. When it does, it says, “DRACO thinks you are avoiding him because you found something out he didn’t want you to know and I might have ADHD but I can put two and two together!”

Harry stares at this for a while. Malfoy thinks Harry found something out? Harry thought _Malfoy_ found something out. 

Too frustrated to deal with Joey anymore, Harry uses a charm to stick the note they’ve been exchanging onto another, writing there, “What’s going on?” and sending it off to Cam.

Conscious of stressing Gwen out, Harry waits for a response in the kitchen. He tries to make a cheese toastie, burns it, and sadly nibbles at the edges anyway. 

_If you don’t like him stop leading him on_.

_You found something out he doesn’t want you to know._

Orrin returns with Cam’s response just after Harry’s given up and binned the blackened cheese toastie. She’s written, “Harry, I love you, but I don’t have any context for this exchange. My advice is this: talk to Draco.”

She’s right. He knows she’s right. But…

He’s already humiliated himself once.

There’s so much noise in his head.

Finally, he gets up, kicks the kitchen chair, and storms back into his bedroom, which doesn’t help Gwen’s mood at all. He grabs _Leaves of Grass_ off the bedside table, flips through until he finds a particular section, and before he can stop himself, he rips page 111 right out of the book. 

It’s a page in the section titled “Calamus.” He opens and shuts drawers and digs under piles of paper until he finds a yellow highlighter, highlights the titles “Among the multitudes,” “O you whom I often and silently come,” and “That shadow my likeness,” and stuffs the page in his pocket before reassuring Gwen and hustling out of his apartment to head to the library. 

When he gets there, he walks right past Cam and Rosa without saying hello and takes a request out in Draco’s name, something he can do because he knows Draco’s ID number by heart at this point. It’s very much not allowed, but Harry doesn’t care about that right now. He shoves the page of _Leaves of Grass_ into the front cover of the “requested” book before he places it on the holds shelf. 

“Harry!” Cam calls after him, but Harry ignores her. 

By Monday, he regrets this and everything else he’s ever done, all the way back to being born. He has not been able to sleep. Gwen is agitated and unhappy with him. He hasn’t heard anything at all from any of his friends, let alone Malfoy. He hates the inside of his apartment. 

He doesn’t want to go to work, but he can’t call in sick again, so he gets on his bike and drives to the library.

Malfoy still hasn’t picked up the hold.

Cam is furious with him. “You’re just being stupid now,” she says. “Why don’t you owl him directly?” 

“It’s not how we do things,” says Harry.

Cam sucks her teeth and doesn’t talk to him for the rest of their shift.

Malfoy never shows up.

Harry doesn’t want to see the inside of his apartment again so soon, so he wanders to a nearby park and sits at a picnic table with a hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts. He watches Harvard and Alse Young students walk to and from class, people in fancy suits stroll briskly by with briefcases, and dogs trotting along with their people. He wonders if he ought to go home and check on Gwen.

He thinks his heart stops when Malfoy suddenly sits heavily across from him. 

He jumps and spills hot chocolate over his hands. He hisses in surprise at the sensation, and Malfoy looks around for muggles, subtly slides his wand out of his sleeve, and vanishes the hot chocolate. 

Harry stares at him.

“Should I have gotten napkins?” Malfoy asks. He smirks, but it fades when Harry keeps on looking at him.

He looks like he hasn’t slept much either. He has bags under his eyes and his black winter coat and black turtleneck make him look even paler. 

But he doesn’t look like a fucking _muppet_. He’s…

Harry looks at his long fingers, at his pointy chin, at his nose. 

Harry doesn’t know what most of those stupid poems even mean, but still, he thinks Walt Whitman wrote them about someone who looked a way that made him feel like this. 

Harry thinks of the one he read last night, “To A Stranger.” _You grew up with me, you were a boy with me…I am to see to it that I do not lose you_. 

Merlin, who the fuck is he, thinking like this?

“Hi,” Harry says carefully.

Malfoy reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a book. _Talk To Me_. The book Harry requested for him. Then he pulls out a crumpled piece of paper—the poems.

“You defaced _Leaves of Grass_,” Malfoy says, accusatory. 

Oh my god.

“Are you serious?” says Harry. 

“I’m going to tell your boss.”

“Do it,” says Harry. “It’s my own copy, for your information.”

“I thought you didn’t like poetry.”

“I don’t.”

They sit there, Malfoy’s fingers trembling as he holds the page of poems. “Well,” he says finally. He taps on the book’s title. “You wanted to talk to me.”

“I wanted _you_ to talk to _me_.” 

Malfoy rolls his eyes, but Harry can tell his heart’s not fully in it—he’s still trembling a little, like at any moment he could start crying, and Harry doesn’t know how to feel about that.

“Look,” says Harry, because he’s tired. He’s tired of people making fun of him, and he’s tired of talking through books, and he’s tired of wondering. “I think you know what I mean by this shite. And if you don’t have feelings for me, or you’re not ready, fine, but just tell me, will you?” 

Malfoy is blushing again. He clutches the page of poetry tight in his fist, crumpling it, but it doesn’t seem like he’s upset about it—it seems like he doesn’t want to let go of it in the winter wind.

“I’m having a hard time believing this is happening,” Malfoy admits. 

“You’re not the only one.”

Malfoy laughs. He blinks furiously. “Potter,” he says. “I…you’re saying you…” 

“Yes,” says Harry. “Fine, yes, like everyone has been trying to tell me, I fancy you. I’ve been flirting with you. I have feelings for you. I don’t know why. Ugh, I do know why—because you’re weird and you’re trying…you’re still learning. And I don’t think I’ve ever thought about anybody else so much in my life.”

“Oh,” says Malfoy. He smooths the page from _Leaves of Grass_ out again, touches it gently with a finger as though he’s found something ancient, something powerful, then slips it back into his pocket. 

“Yeah,” says Harry.

“I…it wasn’t until this year I even knew…I didn’t know I could be like this.”

“Gay?” says Harry.

Malfoy bites his lip. That pained look flashes through his eyes. But he nods.

“I didn’t know…it’s only ever meant…for me, feeling this way has only ever meant being afraid. And _you_—you’ve only ever meant feeling afraid. And angry—but I think angry is also afraid.” 

“You don’t have to be,” says Harry. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Men have…” Malfoy swallows. “For years. For ages…since forever…men have…” He puts his hand in his pocket again, no doubt fingering the piece of paper Harry’s given him. “My father will never speak to me again. I’m not sure my mother will either. I’ll ruin us.”

“_You’ll_ ruin them?” says Harry. “Malfoy, your Dad’s in prison for war crimes.” 

It isn’t funny. There’s nothing at all funny about it, but they both start laughing anyway. 

“Malfoy,” says Harry as their laughter peters off, “Malfoy, can I sit next to you?” 

“Will you call me by my name? I don’t want to think about…” 

“Okay,” says Harry. “All right. Draco.” 

Malfoy closes his eyes. 

“Can I sit next to you?” Harry repeats. “Draco.” 

Malfoy—Draco—doesn’t open his eyes, but he nods. 

Harry slides next to him on the bench. He does not touch him, but he comes very close—he can feel the heat radiating off him, see the way his blush splotches up to his ears. 

“We don’t have to…there’s nothing we _have_ to do,” says Harry. “I know what it’s like. But I…whatever you want to do, I probably want to do it, and—and it’s okay.”

Malfoy—Draco—nods again, and again he does not open his eyes.

It feels like forever that they just sit there in the cold, Draco breathing so harshly Harry is afraid if he’s not having a panic attack he’s about to, and then Draco mumbles something.

“What?” Harry says.

“Can I…” Draco opens his eyes and slowly unfurls the long fingers he’s clenched into a fist. He holds his shaking hand over Harry’s, hovers there. 

“Yeah,” says Harry, turning his hand so it’s palm up, centimeters from Draco’s. “Yes.” 

Draco drops his hand onto Harry’s. Slowly, carefully, willing Draco to pay attention to him, only him, and no one else in this park, Harry slips his fingers between Draco’s, squeezes gently.

Draco lets out a long, deep sigh, like someone who’s been holding their breath for a very long time.

“Okay?” Harry whispers.

“Okay,” says Draco. 

They sit there for so long, too long, until Harry’s arse and fingers and toes are numb and the last of his hot chocolate is cold. When they leave, Draco lets go of Harry’s hand, but it’s okay. Harry doesn’t know how he knows it, but he does—Draco is not going anywhere. Draco will want to hold his hand again.

***

The last Friday before everyone goes home for Christmas (and in Joey’s case, Chanukah, which doesn’t start until Christmas this year), Hermione’s neighbor, Joyce, gets her wish—Hermione, Ron, and Harry come over for Shabbos, and they bring their friends.

Joyce lists about five Schwartz families to see if Joey’s from any of them, finally landing on an aunt of his she knows “from the Catskills when we were young,” then begins talking up her gay grandson. Ron and Joey get along well. Draco and Hermione mostly avoid each other, but they’re more polite than he thought they might manage to be. Cam spends a lot of time chatting with one of Joyce’s granddaughters, and Harry gets the feeling Joyce has more than one not-straight grandchild, from the way the girl is looking at Cam. 

Harry likes watching Joyce light the candles before dinner. He likes watching families do things together—witnessing rituals, seeing the ways people connect to each other. 

He’s surprised, if he’s honest, that Draco came with him.

Since that day in the park, Draco has held his hand some more, but never in public, and finally, after twelve whole days of very careful touching—not that Harry was counting the hours—they kissed in Harry’s flat, Draco soft and inexperienced and wonderful. Harry remembered, while they were kissing in the kitchen, Gwen talking about trusting humans—gentle hands, gentle voice. He remembered the way this poked at his chest, raw and strange, when he thought about Draco Malfoy being gentle, and he held Draco’s harsh face and kissed him so softly, softer than he thought he could.

But with only that to go on, Harry thought maybe Draco would be too scared to meet a stranger as Harry’s boyfriend—because that’s what he is—his boyfriend. But he said, “Okay.” He said, shyly, “That’s what I am.” And he’s here. 

“I can’t believe this really happened,” Ron tells Harry in a low voice in the corner of Joyce’s little sitting room. 

“Shabbos dinner?” says Harry.

“No,” says Ron, and he nods over at Draco, who is across the room helping Joey tell a story that appears to involve a lot of charades to get the point across. “That. Him. You.” 

“Oh,” says Harry. 

“No offense,” says Ron. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s just…I was being an arsehole, but I could _not_ have guessed.” 

“Yeah,” says Harry. “I don’t think I would have guessed either.” 

“I’m sorry for taking the piss so much,” says Ron. “Hermione said we probably made it worse for you. We didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t,” says Harry. 

“I don’t really like him,” Ron adds easily, “But I’m prepared to change my mind, if I have to. And you know…I can tell.”

“You can tell what?”

“You know,” says Ron. He knocks his shoulder into Harry’s. “You’re happy.” 

“Oh,” says Harry. He thinks about this. He watches Draco laugh at something Joey said, and yeah, okay, maybe he still feels a little jealous of Joey sometimes, but he knows they’re only friends. He knows Joey was an important part of both of them getting their heads out of their arses. “Yeah,” says Harry. “I reckon I am.” 

When they leave that night, everyone calling “Gut shabbos!” and “Shabbat Shalom!” and “Have a good night!” into the early darkness, Draco actually takes Harry’s hand in his, and Harry feels like he’s holding something precious. 

He remembers the day after they held hands in the park. At work, he received a request for a children’s book called _Get Your Dragon to Try New Things_. In his jacket pocket, he found a piece of parchment with part of a poem copied out: “Sometimes with the one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturn’d love/But now I think there is no unreturn’d love, the pay is certain one way or another.” 

Harry keeps it in his pocket.

It might be stupid, but nobody has to know. 

“D’you want to come back to mine?” Harry asks. When Draco’s face goes pink, Harry says, “You know what I mean. To do whatever. You said you were ready to hold Gwen.”

Draco’s very jumpy around Gwen. It never occurred to Harry that Draco’s feelings about snakes might have changed over the course of the war. 

“Sure,” says Draco. 

“I brought the bike, though,” says Harry.

Draco’s eyes go wide. He drops Harry’s hand. 

“If you’re not into it, I could always leave it parked here and get it tomorrow. Or you could meet me there.” 

“Harry,” says Draco, his voice very serious. 

Harry frowns. “What’s up?” he asks. 

Draco looks around the street for witnesses, then steps closer and takes Harry’s face in his hands. “I am not—_not_ into the bike.”

“What?” 

“Harry,” Draco repeats. “I am very, very into the bike.”

“Oh,” says Harry. 

“You look very good on the bike,” Draco insists.

“Oh,” Harry repeats, and he grins so wide his cheeks hurt. “Do you think my bike is cool? Is it very sexy of me, riding a motorbike?” 

“Shut up,” says Draco, taking his hands from Harry’s face.

“Draco,” says Harry. He grabs one of the hands Draco’s taking away. “Do you want to ride on the back of my bike?” 

“Fuck,” says Draco, covering his face with his other hand.

“You can if you want,” says Harry.

When Draco looks at him, his face is so intense Harry’s knees feel weak. Fuck his friends, Draco looks so good, all the time. “I want,” he says firmly. 

“Good,” says Harry. 

“But you better have a helmet for both of us.”

“What do you take me for?” says Harry, despite illegally failing to wear a helmet all the time. It’ll be easy enough to conjure one for Draco. “Let’s go.” 

Harry doesn’t know how his family is going to react to Draco, and he doesn’t know what Draco’s parents will do if they find out. He doesn’t know how long it will take for Hermione and Ron to warm up to Draco, or how long it will take for Draco to feel comfortable touching Harry in the way Harry deeply, desperately wants him to. But right now, this is enough. Right now, he’s riding Sirius’ old bike across a city he loves, a city he decided to stay in just because he wanted to, with a man he didn’t know he loved clutching his waist. 

And he knows for sure—he’s very, very happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please support the author by clicking on the kudos button and leaving a comment below! ♥


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